Re: licenses in generated m4 files

[Peter Simons]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz writes:

 > If the field is not constrained by some tool, who does
 > constrain it?

 > Those who accept the macro in the archive.

Right, but "those people" are actually _me_ (and Guido to
some extend). And I said concerning that:

 | I don't feel qualified to read an arbitrary license and
 | spot that kind of thing, hence I'd be greatly in favor of
 | limiting the set of supported licenses to those that are
 | known not to conflict.

I wouldn't mind accepting free-text licenses if someone
(other than me) would volunteer to handle those submissions.

I'm willing to check that a "@license gpl/exception" or
"@license all-permissive" tag does exist and is spelled
right, but I don't want to be responsible for making guesses
about copyright law.


 > I was assuming that the archive (i.e. the envelope) would
 > come under GPL, but that the included M4 file could be
 > under any compatible license.

Duh, you are right. GPL-compatible it is then.


 >> In fact, I seem to recall that _you_ were arguing in
 >> favor of accepting only the all-permissive one?

 > No, I have never argued for that.

Sorry, my mistake.


 > Although I would not use anything but an all-permissive
 > license myself, I don't feel the right to deprive other
 > people that to distribute their macros in GPL if they
 > want to.

I propose that we postpone the question until Tom has some
idea how many macro authors were willing to re-release their
work under an all-permissive license. Should the vast
majority agree to that, then I think making the policy
decision to carry _only_ all-permissive contents has its
merits. Simplicity, first of all.

Should it turn out that half our content has to stay under
GPL-with-exception anyway, then allowing a variety of
licenses is obviously the route to go.

Peter