LICENSE in cygport (was Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] cygport 0.35.2-1)

[Jon Turney]

On 04/07/2022 20:41, Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2022-07-04 10:30, Andrey Repin wrote:
>>> Jon Turney wrote:
>>>> The following packages have been uploaded to the Cygwin distribution:
>>>> * cygport-0.35.2-1
>>>> cygport is the standard method for building and maintaining
>>>> packages for the Cygwin distribution.
>>>> Jon Turney (7):
>>>>        Add LICENSE variable
> 
>>> I would suggest to print a note or warning if LICENSE is missing.
>>> This may encourage maintainers to add it.
> 
>> I second that emotion.
>> For those unconvinced, here's a friendly detailed explanation:
>> https://blog.codinghorror.com/pick-a-license-any-license/
> Good article! Great quote from comments:
> "Most developers will spend more time deciding on which license to use 
> and figuring out the difference between all of the licenses than they 
> will developing the app they want to license."

That is an orthogonal discussion:  We already require that packages have 
a definite license, and that it's an OSI approved one, so we know that 
we can distribute it.

We just don't record that information in the package currently.

> I would suggest not yet, as there is no other documentation that it 
> exists, what it should contain, or suggestions for use, and it would be 
> annoying to maintainers if it appeared every time the .cygport is parsed 
> during a build! It needs to be discussed some more on cygwin-apps.
> 
> Perhaps a reminder at scallywag build or cygport upload, once the 
> requirements have been documented?

Yes, the first step would be to warn at upload if license: is missing, 
but we're not there yet.

I am proposing that the value of LICENSE should be a SPDX license 
expression, and the documentation should now reflect that.