Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] B2 for Gitlab?

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Richard: how do you feel about "All Rights Reserved"?

That's an explicit way of saying, "no free license".
It makes the program proprietary, which is bad.

To say explicitly "this program is proprietary" is a little less bad
than leaving it implicit.  When programs say "All Rights Reserved",
that does not fail criterion B2.

However, if the site encourages people to make useful works
proprietary (and all programs are useful works), that fails criterion
B3.

  >   I suggested that,
  > in GitLab's license list, they require the user to select a license; if
  > the user really does not want to select one, then there should be an
  > option they can select to indicate that they understand that their
  > software is propreitary.

Again, that would satisfy B2 but not B3.

  > You had mentioned to me that we should encourage (/require) clear
  > licensing on all source files, so he is inquiring about the means of
  > doing so.  For the GPL, that's clearly documented.  Do you have opinions
  > on other licenses?

Most pushover licenses are short, so people normally put the whole
license on each source file.  However, it would be ok to handle it
like the GPL, with a short and clear notice on each source file
that refers by name to a specific file in the same directory
which contains the license itself.

I'd recommend calling that file COPYING.

  >   For example, I've seen the entire Expat license put
  > in the source file header because it's pretty small.  But I'd also
  > imagine it's okay to reference the license unambiguously in the header
  > (e.g. as stated on the FSF's license list) and reference a file in the
  > source tree, as we do with the GPL.

Exactly.

  > >
  > > 5. Can you expand on how we would "ensure that licenses are applied
  > > correctly"? Does this mean, e.g. preventing forks (a feature which has 
been
  > > suggested before) and/or private forks would not be possible if the 
project
  > > was using a GPLv2+ license?

That seems like a combination of misunderstandings.  All free licenses
permit distribution of forked versions, that is freedom 3.

I am not sure what "ensure that licenses are applied correctly" means
-- what _in our criteria_ does that refer to?

  > Richard: See screenshots on the aforementioned URL.  I don't think these
  > will suffice, but maybe you'll have useful suggestions for how they
  > format it.

It is hard for me to see those.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.