[oe] LICENSE field format

[Frans Meulenbroeks]

2010/10/20 Maupin, Chase <chase.maupin at ti.com>:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org
>> [mailto:openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org] On Behalf Of
>> Denys Dmytriyenko
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 3:38 PM
>> To: openembedded-devel at lists.openembedded.org
>> Subject: [oe] LICENSE field format
>>
>> All,
>>
>> We've had a number of discussions on the license matter recently. Trying
>> to
>> unify those brings us to the question of the LICENSE field format in
>> recipes.
>> As some projects are dual/triple licensed or use multiple licenses at the
>> same
>> time, it becomes hard to specify it all in the LICENSE field, especially
>> when
>> there are no rules defined. We do have several different formats used to
>> separate multiple licenses, which is quite confusing and doesn't make it
>> clear
>> whether licenses are AND-ed or OR-ed (I know those are not legal terms,
>> but
>> for the purpose of this discussion that's fine :)) Here are some examples:
>>
>> LICENSE = "License1 License2"
>> LICENSE = "License1|License2"
>> LICENSE = "License1, License2"
>> LICENSE = "License1+License2"
>> LICENSE = "License1/License2"
>>
>> LICENSE = "Very Long License Name"
>> LICENSE = "License with some exceptions"
>
> I would vote for something along the following lines:
>
> LICENSE = "License1|License2"
>        - This means the code is licensed under the terms of both licenses
>
> LICENSE = "License1,License2"
>        - This means the code can use either license exclusively
>
> in the src_distribute class spaces should be replaced with "-"s.  Of course, this could lead to licenses like "GPLv3+-with-GCC-RLE".
>
> We should avoid separating licenses with "/" because that will mess up the directory structure or "+" because that would be confusing when + is also used to mean "or later" for some licenses like the GPL.
>
>
As a non-native speaker I'm lost wrt the | and , usage.
e.g. perl says either artistic or gplv1+.
I'd say either the difference between | and , needs to be more clearly
explained or we need to have one form.

If spaces are an issue we could use _
I agree with Chase that using + should be restricted to mean "or later"

Frans