[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Lucio Crusca]

Just a note about what @trampster wrote in comment #21: it's not true that in 
the free-as-in-freedom software world users do not need to agree to the 
licence. The GPL does restrict the single user freedoms in order to grant other 
freedoms to the users community at large. For example the GPL restricts your 
freedom distribute works based on the code under a closed source license only. 
Other free-as-in-freedom licenses grant you that freedom instead.
I think the user should always accept the license, regardless of what the 
license is. This is useful for the GPL and other free licenses too (in fact 
free software windows installers do show the license and ask users to accept 
it, also if it is the GPL).

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  Doesn't display information about exact software license

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[trampster]

I recently needed to create a debian package for a commercial
application. This application would not be distributed through the
ubuntu software center.

After creating the debian package with the custom licence in the
copyright file I installed the application using by double clicking on
the deb file. This launched the ubuntu software center which showed the
licence as "unknown".

I then read about the new machine readable copyright format and changed
my package to use this hoping it would now display the licence. Sadly
the ubuntu software center still shows 'unknown'.

Coming from the commercial world, the company I work for expects the
user to be informed of the licence during the installation process. They
are familiar with windows installers where the user is shown the licence
and must agree to it before installing.

I realize that in the open source world a user does not need to be shown
or agree to the licence as they do not restrict user freedoms. However
as ubuntu gains popularity, more companies are looking to bring there
proprietary applications to ubuntu. And these companies have
expectations regarding the install process when it comes to there
licence.

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Title:
  Doesn't display information about exact software license

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
   Status: In Progress => Confirmed

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[anatoly techtonik]

How is it going?

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Design in progress:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations#license

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
   Status: Confirmed => In Progress

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[anatoly techtonik]

At least there is nothing that hinders the change to make license
visible for the software that uses only single license. For projects
with multiple it can state like Google Code does - "Other Open Source"
or a "First License, ... "

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
 Assignee: (unassigned) => Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)

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  Doesn't display information about exact software license

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Debian now has a standard for this: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-
manuals/copyright-format/1.0/

The next step is to specify how the "License:" fields in a package's
debian/copyright should be aggregated if necessary, and summarized as a
single line of text. For example, "License: Open source (GPL 3, MPL 1.1,
and others)".

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Description changed:

  When you see information about software that you want to install, Ubuntu
  Software Center says whether the license is "Open source",
  "Proprietary", or "Unknown". It does not show more detail than that
  (e.g. GPLv2).
  
  It should be helpful not only to make others understand the nature of
  free software, but also to distinguish free and open source software
  from software like (just an example) Google Earth, free for non
  commercial use.
  
  This cannot be fixed in Ubuntu Software Center until Ubuntu packages
  themselves provide machine-readable information about their exact
  license. For one proposal to implement this, see
  .
+ 
+ See also .

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  Doesn't display information about exact software license

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Kiwinote]

** Tags added: db

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Tudor Holton]

Has there been any movement on this bug?   I have an open question that
directly relates to it at https://answers.launchpad.net/software-
center/+question/142628 , particularly in relation to skovprodukter's
question in this bug.

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
Milestone: later => None

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[David Ayers]

I would also like to express the wish to be able to filter packages that
are non-free.

I'm aware that the definition of what is non-free is often contested but
I would hope that a few standard profiles could be used: FSF/DFSG/OSI to
which the majority of fractions would agree to.

This would probably be need to implemented in Debian but I haven't found
a bug report to post this suggestion to and the DEP5 seems to be an
internal Debian process.

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Donjan Rodic]

@grofaty:
Yes, summaries would be better, as your first two points explain well.

One thing we shouldn't overestimate (or fear) is the average user's apathy 
towards licensing.They will come to like the Software Center because it offers 
them a wealth of free (beer) programs. They would generally skip over the 
little 'GPL', 'BSDL' or 'MIT' link, but I'm pretty sure many would become 
curious at some point and ask themselves why and how they can get all these 
things for free, without advertisement or data mining.
I've already had people asking me what that 'License: Open Source' actually 
means in the current Software Center. While we're at it, I'd also recommend 
turning that one into a link with a web page explaining the concept.

It's just a nice chance to offer new users insight into the foundations
of"our community. There's no reason to miss it :)

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[grofaty]

@Donjan Rodic,
I think there should be a summaries of license, because of two reasons:
1. Who likes to read 10 pages of original license?
2. Are ordinary people lawyers, so understanding law language?
3. Do ordinary people care about open source? For most of the people free as a 
beer and free as a speech is the same - they are not a programmers to know how 
to change a program, so why should they care.

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Donjan Rodic]

I agree with the idea: we can't complain about users not understanding the 
difference as long as we don't offer them the opportunity to do so.
It's a small but IMO meaningful way to help users apprehend the spirit of 
Free/Open Source software.

A simple listing of the project's licenses (as soon as we have a
mechanism that supports this, of course) with hyperlinks to short
summaries (or the license text itself) would suffice and wouldn't
clutter the interface.

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Martin Olesen]

True, my mistake. I meant that the license name, being GPL or another,
and a brief explanation should be visible.

Now there is only a button labeled 'free', which I assume means 'free as
in beer'. The 'free as in speech'-part is only represented as a faint,
grey text at the bottom saying 'open source'. The two parts of freedom
shold both be promoted, not only the beer.

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Re: [Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Alexey Kotlyarov]

В Вск, 14/03/2010 в 11:46 +, Martin Olesen пишет:
> Regarding #3:
> 
> Is it possible to show "GPL" (with a brief explanation) for the packages
> in own repositories? It would be a good beginning, though not possible
> for all packages at the moment.
What do you mean by "Own repositories"? Please note that even packages
in Ubuntu main use a multitude of licenses - for example, MIT, X11,
Mozilla and Apache.

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[Bug 435183] Re: Doesn't display information about exact software license

[Martin Olesen]

Regarding #3:

Is it possible to show "GPL" (with a brief explanation) for the packages
in own repositories? It would be a good beginning, though not possible
for all packages at the moment.

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