Talk:License
Which Open Source License applies to LEAF in general and Bering-uClibc 4.x in particular? As per my mail to the leaf-devel mailing list 2011-05-13 and kp's reply it is not completely clear. Davidmbrooke 14:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Many of the component parts of Bering-uClibc 4.x are released under the GNU General Public License, version 2, most notably:
This license requires that any "derivative works" be licensed under a "compatible license". Since we make changes (i.e. apply patches) to these we are creating "derivative works" and must therefore comply with the requirements of the GPL. In practice, this almost certainly means that Bering-uClibc 4.x must be released under either GPL v2 or GPL v3.
A particular requirement of the GPL is the need to make source code available by the same mechanism(s) that we make binary code available.
We meet this requirement by providing a .tar.gz file containing all of the source code in the same download folder as the disk Image files.
The SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use require that code posted to SourceForge.net be "compliant with the Open Source Initiative ("OSI")'s Open Source Definition (http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) or certified as an "OSI-Approved License" (http://opensource.org/licenses)."
Best practice for developers is to include a line in every Package's .help file, preferably just after the "Requires:" entry (if any), to clarify which license applies to that particular Package. For example, if GPL v2 applies:
License: GNU General Public License, version 2 (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html)
