I think there is one issue most people are overlooking: licensing is *not* the same as ownership. Ownership allows you to release your code under any license you want and other users are able to use it under the terms of the license. Do not make the error of wanting to transfer ownership instead of just a license release.
Also, I fully agree with Peter Lewis' sentiments 2 posts ago: it is dull, but important to get right. Adding to that, a license on an individual PKGBUILD may not be enforcable (since it is unlikely to reach the complexity threshold), however, given the vast amount of scripts in the AUR database as a whole, they will be. Thus I would propose an "uploads are licensed under [...]" next to the submit button, which should sufficiently cover the issue. My general thoughts: - PKGBUILDs should be freely distributable - Attribution of the previous authors should be mandatory - Commercial exploitation (i.e., using/modifying without giving anything back) should not be possible These points are all covered by the GPL. Plus it would be simple since most of Arch is already under that license. BSD won't cover the third. Public domain won't cover points 2 and 3. Thus, I think GPL would be the (only) right choice. 2011/2/10 Xyne <x...@archlinux.ca> > On 2011-02-07 09:13 -0200 (06:1) > Bernardo Barros wrote: > > > 2011/2/6 Ray Rashif <sc...@archlinux.org>: > > > # Copyright 1999-2011 Gentoo Foundation > > > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 > > > > But Arch is a legal entity? Can we put "Arch" as the copyright holder? > > That would make it possible for Arch to prevent packagers from distributing > their own packages. It would almost certainly never happen, but naive > optimism > is a bad thing. I have seen OSS projects sell out to corporations before. > > That's also why I remove the "or any later version" clause from anything > that I > release under the GPL. No one can guarantee that there will never be a > major > loophole in a future version, or that all future versions will be in the > same > spirit. >
