On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 22:01 -0800, John Millikin wrote: > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 21:51, Chris Smith <cdsm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 21:41 -0800, John Millikin wrote: > >> Licensing is a property of the code, not the package; Cabal's > >> licensing field is only a useful shorthand for "most of the code here > >> is covered by...". > > > > That would be a very dangerous position to take. When the Cabal license > > field informs someone that something is licensed under the BSD, I think > > any reasonable person would assume that means ALL of the code is > > licensed under the BSD, and without added restrictions. We're being > > extremely unhelpful if developers have to read through every source file > > in every library they use, and all of its indirect dependencies, to make > > sure there's not an additional restriction in there somewhere. > > I don't think a reasonable person would assume that. Based on the > almost universal habit of noting the license in source file comment > headers, a reasonable programmer would know to check the status of any > code he wants to copy into his own works. > > For example, if I copy some BSD3 code into one of my GPL'd libraries, > that code remains BSD3 (and owned by the original author). The Cabal > field will still say GPL, because most of the code is GPL, but some of > it is not. > > Alternatively, I could bundle a GPL'd test script with BSD3 code. The > code itself (and hence Cabal file) is BSD3, but not everything in the > archive is. > > The package's dependencies are irrelevant, unless the package's code > was itself copied from one of its deps.
Most reasonable people have limited time to read through the source code
and some of it does not include the header.
I think it is reasonable that the License include most compatible
("restrictive") license of library i.e. if one is using GPL-2+, GPL-3+
and BSD-3 in single project it should include GPL-3+ even if most of it
is covered by BSD-3.
There is smaller problem with program as hardly anyone links with
program.
Regards
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