#828: Distribution.License datatype and comment weirdness ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: sli | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.10.1.0 Severity: minor | Keywords: Difficulty: unknown | Ghcversion: Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Looking at the Distribution.License source, I notice some issues with the comments and (sadly) the data License type. Some of these seem like bugs, some maybe more like enhancement requests. What seems to me like bugs ========================== * In the comments, GPL is expanded as "GNU Public License". The correct expansion is "GNU General Public License". * AllRightsReserved is really a misnomer. "All rights reserved" doesn't mean what many people seem to think it means. Specifically it does NOT mean "no license granted". Rather it is a boilerplate text that once was, but no longer is, required in some jurisdictions to get full copyright protection. Nowadays it is entirely superfluous, but still often added to copyright notices by custom. It is *entirely orthogonal* to whether there is some license granted or not. Possible enhancements ===================== First, GPL versions. It's quite common to have at least GPLv2 only (for example the Linux kernel is so licensed), GPLv2+ (lots of software), GPLv3 only and GPLv3+ (new software releases by FSF). It appears that there is no distinction between these. It is also common to grant exceptions (additional permissions) to the GPL (in the way specified by FSF in their FAQ) to allow linking to some GPL- incompatible library. Perhaps a "plus additional permissions" modifier could be added. Second, it's also quite common to have disjunctive licenses, like "you may distribute this software either under the Q Public License, or the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version". You may want to look at how the Debian project maintains machine-readable specifications of licenses. See, for example, http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep5/ . -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/828 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects