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Re: License texts in base-files?


On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, John Morrison wrote:

> I've just been reading what Debian does with it's base-files,
> it includes several license texts.  Would it be useful for Cygwin
> to do that too?  Then we could just point folks to their own machine :)

It sure would.  I've looked at the licenses that came with the packages on
my machine (which doesn't have all of the packages installed), and most of
the files are identical or differ only in whitespace.  Details for those
interested are at the end of the message.  One conclusion is that an
overwhelming majority of packages (on my machine) uses the GPL or LGPL,
and the rest are so varied that it probably doesn't make sense to store
most of the licenses.

> If we did, is GPL the only license that should be included?  Debian
> includes the following...
>
> Artistic
> BSD
> GPL (ln -s GPL-2)
> GPL-2
> LGPL (ln -s LGPL-2.1)
> LGPL-2
> LGPL-2.1

What about the X Consortium (MIT) license?  See below.

> Also, should they be in the same location; /usr/share/common-licenses?
> Thoughts?

FWIW, I'd prefer them to be somewhere under /usr/share/doc
(/usr/share/doc/common-licenses?).
HTH,
	Igor

License details (warning: long)
===========================================================================
Ok, here are the licenses I found on my machine (anything in /usr/share,
/usr/doc, /usr/X11R6/share, or /usr/X11R6/doc named "LICENSE", "COPYING*",
or "LEGAL", case-insensitive).  The comments below are based on the output
of "diff -sb --from-file=<web-license> <license-file>", where
<web-license> is the one downloaded from the definitive source (the GNU
website for GPL and LGPL, and the OSI website for the others).  I've
ignored minor whitespace and punctuation differences, as well as the
presence or absence of the word "Appendix:" after the license.  Those
marked with (*) are software-specific licenses that probably aren't
common, so won't need to be included.  The output of "cygcheck -cd" is
attached.

Size  File                                                  Comments
----- ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------
18007 /usr/doc/ctags-5.5/COPYING                            GPL
17992 /usr/doc/enscript-1.6.3/COPYING                       GPL
2574  /usr/doc/ghostscript-7.05/Copying.htm                 Aladding license (*)
17992 /usr/doc/mc-4.6.0/COPYING                             GPL
3673  /usr/doc/php-4.2.0-2/LICENSE                          PHP license (*)
1277  /usr/doc/popt-1.6.4/COPYING                           MIT/X + no ad
17982 /usr/doc/procps-010801/COPYING                        GPL, old address
25275 /usr/doc/procps-010801/COPYING.LIB                    LGPL v2
5448  /usr/doc/upx-1.24/LICENSE                             UPX [GPL] (*)
17989 /usr/share/doc/a2ps-4.13/COPYING                      GPL
17985 /usr/share/doc/antiword-0.34/COPYING                  GPL, old address
2832  /usr/share/doc/apache-1.3.29-eapi/LICENSE             Apache 1.1 (*)
18007 /usr/share/doc/autoconf-2.59/COPYING                  GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/autoconf-devel-2.59/COPYING            GPL
18043 /usr/share/doc/autoconf-stable-2.13/COPYING           GPL
18007 /usr/share/doc/automake-1.7.9/COPYING                 GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/automake-devel-1.7.9/COPYING           GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/automake-stable-1.4p6/COPYING          GPL
18454 /usr/share/doc/bash-2.05b/COPYING                     GPL + bash exemption
1740  /usr/share/doc/bzip2-1.0.2/LICENSE                    bzip [BSD?] (*)
12488 /usr/share/doc/cocom-0.995/COPYING                    GPL v1
25283 /usr/share/doc/cocom-0.995/COPYING.LIB                LGPL v2
12559 /usr/share/doc/cvs-1.11.6/COPYING                     GPL v1, no address
25337 /usr/share/doc/cvs-1.11.6/COPYING.LIB                 LGPL v2, no address
17984 /usr/share/doc/cygipc-2.03/COPYING                    GPL, old address
17992 /usr/share/doc/cygutils-1.2.5/COPYING                 GPL
1184  /usr/share/doc/expat/COPYING                          MIT/X
1156  /usr/share/doc/fontconfig-2.2.2/COPYING               fontconf [?] (*)
17992 /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.3.1-3/COPYING                    GPL
26430 /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.3.1-3/COPYING.LIB                LGPL v2.1
17992 /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.3.1-3/gcc/COPYING                GPL
26430 /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.3.1-3/gcc/COPYING.LIB            LGPL v2.1
26430 /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.3.1-3/libf2c/libU77/COPYING.LIB  LGPL v2.1
17984 /usr/share/doc/gdbm-1.8.3/COPYING                     GPL, old address
18007 /usr/share/doc/gettext-0.12.1/COPYING                 GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/help2man-1.33.1/COPYING                GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/indent/COPYING                         GPL
17984 /usr/share/doc/libgdbm-devel-1.8.3/COPYING            GPL, old address
25283 /usr/share/doc/libiconv-1.9.1/COPYING.LIB             LGPL v2
3834  /usr/share/doc/libpng-1.2.5/LICENSE                   PNG license (*)
3834  /usr/share/doc/libpng12-devel-1.2.5/LICENSE           PNG license (*)
18007 /usr/share/doc/libtool-1.5b/COPYING                   GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/libtool-devel-1.5/COPYING              GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/libtool-stable-1.4.3/COPYING           GPL
1498  /usr/share/doc/libxml2-2.6.4/COPYING                  libxslt [BSD?] (*)
2968  /usr/share/doc/libxslt-1.1.2/COPYING                  libxslt [BSD?] (*)
17982 /usr/share/doc/lynx/COPYING                           GPL, old address
17982 /usr/share/doc/man-1.5k/COPYING                       GPL, old address
17981 /usr/share/doc/minires-0.97/LICENSE                   GPL
3218  /usr/share/doc/mktemp-1.5/LICENSE                     mktemp [~BSD] (*)
18007 /usr/share/doc/patchutils-0.2.30pre1/COPYING          GPL
1547  /usr/share/doc/pdksh-5.2.14/LEGAL                     public domain (*)
12515 /usr/share/doc/perl-5.8.2-1/Copying                   GPL v1, new address
6111  /usr/share/doc/perl-5.8.2-1/Artistic                  Artistic (old?) (*)
18007 /usr/share/doc/pinfo-0.6.8/COPYING                    GPL
17992 /usr/share/doc/pkgconfig-0.15.0/COPYING               GPL
13110 /usr/share/doc/python-2.3.3/LICENSE                   Python license (*)
18008 /usr/share/doc/readline-4.3/COPYING                   GPL
17982 /usr/share/doc/rsync-2.6.0/COPYING                    GPL, old address
10245 /usr/share/doc/unzip-5.50/COPYING.OLD                 InfoZip old (*)
3020  /usr/share/doc/unzip-5.50/LICENSE                     InfoZip'02 [BSD] (*)
17976 /usr/share/doc/wget-1.9.1/COPYING                     GPL, old address
2845  /usr/share/doc/wtf-0.0.4/COPYING                      [?] (*)
17992 /usr/share/doc/wtf-0.0.4/LICENSE                      GPL
2689  /usr/share/doc/zip-2.3/LICENSE                        InfoZip'99 [BSD] (*)
2692  /usr/share/doc/zip-2.3/zcrypt29/LICENSE               InfoZip'00 [BSD] (*)
18043 /usr/share/texmf/doc/fonts/ae/COPYING                 GPL
1344  /usr/share/texmf/doc/fonts/eurosym/COPYING            [?] (*)
803   /usr/share/texmf/doc/fonts/oldgerman/COPYING          public domain (*)
17982 /usr/share/texmf/doc/fonts/polish/qfonts/LICENSE      GPL, old address
17982 /usr/share/texmf/doc/generic/xypic/COPYING            GPL, old address
17992 /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/booktabs/COPYING           GPL
17982 /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/mdwtools/COPYING           GPL, old address
17982 /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/pb-diagram/COPYING         GPL, old address
17982 /usr/X11R6/doc/lesstif-0.93.91/COPYING                GPL, old address
25265 /usr/X11R6/doc/lesstif-0.93.91/COPYING.LIB            LGPL v2, old addr
25994 /usr/X11R6/doc/lesstif-0.93.91/html/COPYING.LIB.html  LGPL v2, old addr
1158  /usr/X11R6/share/doc/libXft-2.1.6/COPYING             fontconf [?] (*)
1     /usr/X11R6/share/doc/X-startup-scripts-1.0.7/COPYING  empty

-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton

Attachment: cygcheck-cd.out
Description: Text document


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