On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Bruno Harbulot < bruno.harbu...@manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On 18/05/2010 20:33, Justin Edelson wrote: > >> Clarification of the documentation and/or mechanisms on how to >>> > redistribute the licences properly with the software is what I'm >>> > suggesting. In terms of core Maven mechanism, that could consist of an >>> > improvement with respect to the convention over configuration principle >>> > that Maven follows. >>> >> I agree that the documentation can be improved with respect to this. You >> can certainly submit some documentation patches on this point. I'm not >> sure what "core" changes would be involved. There's probably some >> possible enforcer plugin, but ultimately it's not Maven's job to >> interpret the semantics of a license - that's something developers need >> to be responsible for. >> > > That's exactly the point: saying it's someone else's problem is just denial > of the problem. You have this backwards... saying it is Maven's problem is denying that developers need to be cognizant of the requirement of the license they have chosen for their project. Maven cannot give legal advice, which is essentially what you are asking it to do. > A publisher's omission to include a licence doesn't grant whoever gets hold > of that software a licence to redistribute unconditionally. > This is your interpretation of a legal document. > The problem with most OSS licences (as I was saying above), is that a > developer's mistake ends up putting the burden on the distributors. > And if the operators of Central were concerned about this burden, I suppose they would have done something about it. > Since the Maven system overall relies on the tool, the repository and > owners (or people allowed to distribute) to publish their software, this is > a problem that has to be considered as a whole, I think. > This is a misunderstanding. Maven is not dependent upon the existence of Central. > > I'm not arguing for perfection, just convenience in what I think are the > common cases. Assuming that developers might be a little bit lazy sometimes > and that most OSS software do have a least a requirement of quoting their > licence with their copies, if a developer/publisher follows the default > layout (that is, LICENSE.txt next pom.xml according to the documentation), > this licence should end up automatically in what's going to be fetched by > the tool when a user puts it as a dependency in their own software, unlike > what happens at the moment. > (I guess including some licence text could easily apply to > closed/proprietary software too.) > I don't disagree with any of this. By default, the resources plugin probably should copy /LICENSE.txt to target/classes/META-INF/LICENSE.txt if src/main/resources/META-INF/LICENSE.txt doesn't exist. > I think that would be a more sensible default behaviour for the whole > workflow, and that's what makes it a problem for the "core" Maven. As Benjamin said, this isn't what "core" Maven does. You are describing a plugin feature. Justin > > > > Best wishes, > > Bruno. > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@maven.apache.org > >
