REUSE December 2023

reuse@lists.fsfe.org

2 participants
2 discussions

Handling of MPL 2.0 license?
by Carsten Agger 07 Feb '24

07 Feb '24

Hi all The REUSE FAQ states that some people "miss the long legal blurbs at the tops of files, miss the |COPYING|/|LICENSE| file in the root of the repository, think that |.license| files clutter the directory, or find it very strange that even insignificant non-code files get licensing headers. The different-ness of REUSE can seem peculiar in that way." I definitely don't miss those blurbs. In that way, REUSE automation is an excellent thing. However, I wonder if this might cause people to fail to apply the MPL 2.0 license. Section 1.4 of the MPL 2.0 license[2] states that "Covered Software" "means Source Code Form to which the initial Contributor has attached the notice in Exhibit A, the Executable Form of such Source Code Form, and Modifications of such Source Code Form, in each case including portions thereof." Exhibit A is this statement: "This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/." Normally, this is interpreted as meaning that this statement should be included in headers, however "if it is not possible or desirable to put the notice in a particular file, then You may include the notice in a location (such as a LICENSE file in a relevant directory) where a recipient would be likely to look for such a notice". If you attach the SPDX headers indicating "MPL 2.0", however, this notice appears exactly NOWHERE in the repository except in the license file itself, where it only serves the purpose of specifying the requirement and thus cannot be said to be attached to each file in the repository. There's a question on StackExchange discussing a similar issue.[3] The question is if this particular requirement in MPL 2.0, that actively *demands* the inclusion of a specific text in order to apply, means that REUSE's current standard check is insufficient for the MPL and that the MPL Exhibit A text should be included somewhere? (Like, in a file called ".reuse/MPL2.0-Exhibit-A.txt". Best, Carsten [1]: https://reuse.software/faq/#tradition [2]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/ [3]: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7736/is-question-25-from-mpl…

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How to license a COPYRIGHT file?
by Matthew Rothlisberger 11 Dec '23

11 Dec '23

Hi, I include a COPYRIGHT file in the top level of some repositories. This delineates my copyright, any trademark information, the project's primary source code license, and (in the case of the GPL) all supplemental terms I've applied to my work. This is technically a unique work, but is really a collection of legalese blurbs with my name and my project's name peppered throughout. It's a notice that should be reproduced in any unmodified distribution, with little purpose beyond that. My guess has been to use one of the CC-BY-ND license variants here, but is there any specific advice on how to license such a file under REUSE? Best, Matthew Rothlisberger

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REUSE December 2023