License compliance - Githubissues

befeleme / pyp2spec

Generate Fedora RPM spec files for Python packages

MIT License

11 stars 4 forks source link

License compliance #29

Closed pkking closed 1 year ago

pkking commented 1 year ago

When im building a pypi package in copr, i met this:

...
License 'Freely Distributable' is or may not be allowed in Fedora, quitting
stderr: 

Unable to generate spec for `cherrypy'

https://download.copr.fedorainfracloud.org/results/lcrpkking/waaagh/srpm-builds/05088358/builder-live.log.gz

Im not sure the Freely Distributable is forbidden by fedora or its just a misjudge

hroncok commented 1 year ago

I am afraid Freely Distributable is not a free software license. I wonder why cherrypy lists that instead of just listing the actual BSD license.

pkking commented 1 year ago

I see two license in the setup.py:

        'License :: Freely Distributable',
        'Operating System :: OS Independent',
        'Framework :: CherryPy',
        'License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License',

Should it be acceptable?

befeleme commented 1 year ago

@pkking, the question of licensing is rather an unpleasant one. If an upstream project defines more classifiers, one which is free (BSD), and one that isn't (Freely Distributable) we can't just choose one of them and declare that the project is "good for Fedora". In this case, cherrypy should stop using the 'License :: Freely Distributable' classifier.

befeleme commented 1 year ago

What you can do about it?

ask upstream to delete the 'License :: Freely Distributable' - the best option, will stop causing problems in the future for the others
(optionally) you can review the actual license of the project, which is BSD-3-Clause. You can build the package in Copr with a custom build method. As a script invoke pyp2spec cherrypy --top-level --license BSD-3-Clause and define pyp2spec as a build dependency. This will skip the license compliance phase and set the value you chose. Be mindful that Copr only allows to build packages with free licenses, same as Fedora (https://docs.pagure.org/copr.copr/user_documentation.html#what-i-can-build-in-copr)

befeleme commented 1 year ago

There's another bad news. Fedora is migrating to SPDX standard which is more strict, and it's impossible to tell automatically whether BSD License is BSD-2-Clause or BSD-3-Clause. Soon this will start creating problems too. I really hope that Python projects switch to the standard too, so that we don't have to translate the classifiers anymore. But that's just future... In the meantime, the tips from the previous answer are still valid.

pkking commented 1 year ago

Will try to ping the upstream, thanks.