Re: [PATCH 1/2] recipes: fix LICENSE fields

[Denys Dmytriyenko <denis@denix.org>]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 08:21:58PM +0200, Martin Jansa wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:39:19PM -0400, Denys Dmytriyenko wrote:
> > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:36:16AM +0200, Martin Jansa wrote:
> > > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:28:15AM +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2011-05-10 at 09:39 +0200, Martin Jansa wrote:
> > > > >   | /OE/tmpdir-shr/work/armv4t-oe-linux-gnueabi/pixman-0.22.0-r5.0/temp/run.SRC_DISTRIBUTECOMMAND.17340: line 95: /pixman: No such file or directory
> > > > 
> > > > If '&' in ${LICENSE} is breaking SRC_DISTRIBUTECOMMAND then that
> > > > suggests there is a bug in that code (probably some sort of missing
> > > > quotes).  Removing the &s might be a fine thing to do anyway, but it
> > > > would also be a good idea to track down and fix the underlying bug.
> > > 
> > > it calls cd tmp/deploy/sources/$license/pixman
> > > where with $license == '&' (because LICENSE field is splitted by ' ' and
> > > then '|'), it ends doing cd on background and then complaing about /pixman
> > > 
> > > Directory named & even when created with right backslash
> > > is still hard to use, so I think it would be better to have QA check 
> > > that LICENSE field has sane value, even better when we have list of
> > > possible values etc.
> > 
> > I would agree with Phil that fixing distribute_sources is required, but I'd go 
> > even further as to say that the current implementation of distribute_sources 
> > is quite bad. It splits the LICENSE field into tokens based on the wrong 
> > assumptions that all the whitespaces are used to separate multiple licenses. 
> > In other words, "Public Domain" is a valid license and shouldn't be replaced 
> > with "PD". What are you going to do with "GPLv2+ w/ GCC RLE"? Which stands for 
> > "GPL version 2 (or later) with GCC Runtime Library Exception" and is a valid 
> 
> > license with an exception... Sorry, but "GPL+libraryexception" is just bogus 
> > (and it's not a personal remark - I do understand your constrains, see below).
> 
> Agreed, but do you find
> LICENSE = "GPL + library exception"

LICENSE = "GPL w/ library exception"

> better?
> 
> > I understand that distribute_sources is quite important and useful. So, maybe 
> > the correct way is to adopt a proper and stricter syntax for the LICENSE 
> > field, which uses some other characters to separate multiple licenses. Say, 
> > something like ":" or "|" should work. Using "," would be even better, but I'm 
> 
> '|' is alredy used for split in distribute_sources, but I'm not sure if
> my interpretation that it means logical OR in LICENSE context is right
> (and space as logical AND).

Yes, I had already previously suggested using Debian's syntax for the license 
field, which allows complex combinations, such as OR/AND:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.openembedded/38585/focus=38590

> > afraid it can easily be used inside the license name on its own... Basically, 
> > something along the lines of "GPL:MIT:Public Domain:Texas A&M Proprietary" etc.
> > 
> > Any comments or objections?
> 
> oe-core does more with LICENSEs (like LIC_FILES_CHKSUMs and keeping
> common licenses in
> /OE/shr-core/openembedded-core/meta/files/common-licenses which could be
> used for QA check on LICENSE field) so I think it should be discussed on
> oe-core ML first and then use the same syntax in oe.dev or just switch
> to oe-core..

Yes, I'm quite aware of Yocto/oe-core handling of licenses and checksum 
verification mechanism for them, but unfortunately we don't have that in 
mainline classic OE... We could try backporting it from oe-core to classic OE 
or just wait until with switch to oe-core completely. In that case I'd suggest 
avoid mangling license fields just to satisfy broken distribute_sources...

-- 
Denys