[Savannah-register-public] Re: [task #9791] Submission of ForgePlucker

[Eric S. Raymond]

Nicodemo Alvaro <address@hidden>:
> 
> Follow-up Comment #4, task #9791 (project administration):
> 
> It just recently clicked in my head that the big reason why we require a
> clear and precise license notice is that many projects have a file called
> COPYING and so this will create a mess when there is a project that includes
> your code or vice versa. Does that to you justify the need for the full
> modified BSD license notice? If not I still have not received your indication
> of why. Have you already submitted it to address@hidden 

No.
 
> For the record, I privately sent you the below message.
> 
> > Yes, please send me your explanation. I will send the message to
> > licensing and cc you and savannah-hackers. How does that sound?
> > 
> > There are a few things I was thinking about that to them make it
> > essential to have the full license. If you see the GNU GPL license
> > notice you will see that there are three things defined. There is no
> > warranty, where you can get the license if it was not given to you, and
> > which license the program is under. Free software allows you to copy
> > any part of the code. Since the code and license are separate it's easy
> > to forget to copy the license.

I didn't receive the previous.  

I think I understand now.  You want a full license in each header 
because you think inclusion by reference to a COPYING file might lead
to the link to the full COPYING file being lost when someone else
picks up the code.

For myself, I think this is not a case worth worrying about.  Unlike
someone attaching GPL, I don't have any derivative-works conditions I
want to impose on downstream parities.  So as long as they don't
remove my copyright, whether they read the COPYING file actually
matters very little to me; anyone who reads "new BSD license" will
know what I want without having to read that file.

But there's an easy solution to this "problem".  I can say "BSD license",
include an URL to the canonical BSD license at OSI and remove COPYING
entirely.  For your purposes, this might be better.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>