Bug 200086 - [PATCH] Added license PublicDomain
Summary: [PATCH] Added license PublicDomain
Status: Closed FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Ports & Packages
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Ports Framework (show other bugs)
Version: Latest
Hardware: Any Any
: --- Affects Only Me
Assignee: Port Management Team
URL:
Keywords: patch
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2015-05-10 02:58 UTC by Yuri Victorovich
Modified: 2016-01-14 13:20 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments
patch (941 bytes, patch)
2015-05-10 02:58 UTC, Yuri Victorovich
no flags Details | Diff

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Description Yuri Victorovich freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-10 02:58:14 UTC
Created attachment 156585 [details]
patch

It seems like the reasonable license to have "PublicDomain".

When the author said "This code is in the public domain".
Comment 1 Mathieu Arnold freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-10 06:38:59 UTC
Well, being in the public domain is not a license, it's more the absence of it.
Comment 2 Yuri Victorovich freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-10 08:13:24 UTC
> Well, being in the public domain is not a license, it's more the absence of it.

Mk scripts and portlint don't think this way. They keep complaining.
Comment 3 Mathieu Arnold freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-10 09:48:03 UTC
Yes, sure, portlint complains that the port's Makefile do not have a license defined.

Which is fine by me, as the port does not have a license.
Comment 4 Yuri Victorovich freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-10 09:51:36 UTC
No, this will come up again and again. I already got some port bounced by committer because of portlint complaints.

When author says "Public Domain" this is one thing. When the license is missing (like when the author didn't put anything, still thinking, forgot, whatever), or it is missing in port - this is another situation. You can't mix the two.
Comment 5 Eitan Adler freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-14 05:36:30 UTC
In the past when this has come up I've objected to adding a public domain 'license'.  There are very few software products that actually lack a license (mostly products of the US government as well as a small selection of other things).

Other products whose author claims are in the public domain, aren't. I'd very carefully read the contents here: http://opensource.org/faq#public-domain as well as the linked mailing list threads.
Comment 6 Yuri Victorovich freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2015-05-14 05:52:35 UTC
But BSD port system shouldn't be concerned with the legal intricacies of the public domain license definition.

Such license will simply reflect the fact that significant number of authors believe that there is such license. There is also the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_software

I recently made a port that claims to be in public domain. When I grepped in the port tree, I found ~45 ports that added such section:

> LICENSE=        unknown
> LICENSE_NAME=   Public Domain
> LICENSE_TEXT=   This software us in the public domain
> LICENSE_PERMS=  dist-mirror dist-sell pkg-mirror pkg-sell auto-accept

Practically speaking, it is either this:
> LICENSE=        PublicDomain
or more and more ports will have to copy-paste the above 4-line section with some variations. Such software is out there anyway, weather we like it or not.
Comment 7 Dmitry Marakasov freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2016-01-14 13:20:20 UTC
LICENSE=PD support was added in r405874