Difference between revisions of "Licenses in Operating Systems Specification"

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#REDIRECT [[Liblicense]]
[[Category:Operating System]]
 
[[Category:idea]]
 
[[Category:licenses]]
 
[[Category:specification]]
 
{{incomplete}}
 
 
 
This is a spec for [[Include licenses in operating systems|including licenses in an Operating System]]. Currently, Gentoo is the only distro that puts licenses into a central location (/usr/portage/licenses) and they are just as text files. However, all software (open and closed) includes license declarations, links to licenses, etc in each package. This is an area in need for serious shared infrastructure. This spec. is written to support building a mechanism into common operating systems for supporting all types of licenses to help license different components of software as well as content/media on the system, and what users generate.
 
 
 
== Licenses ==
 
 
 
=== Content ===
 
 
 
* CC licenses
 
* GNU FDL
 
* FreeArt
 
 
 
=== Source Code ===
 
 
 
* GNU GPL
 
* GNU LGPL
 
* MIT License
 
 
 
=== Questions ===
 
 
 
* What licenses should be allowed?
 
* Should licenses be weighted?
 
* How will they connect with mime-types and how will a system know which filetypes connect with which licenses?
 
 
 
=== Naming ===
 
 
 
What is the best way to name licenses for inclusion.
 
 
 
Possibly this form:
 
 
 
<pre>
 
LICENSE_PROVIDER-LICENSENAME-VERSION-JURISDICTION_CODE-FORM.OPTIONAL_FILE_ENDING
 
</pre>
 
 
 
Then, for the three file types, this possibly would make sense:
 
 
 
<pre>
 
cc-attribution-2.5-en-machine.rdf
 
cc-attribution-2.5-en-human.txt
 
cc-attribution-2.5-en-lawyer.txt
 
cc-attribution-2.5--lawyer.txt
 
</pre>
 
 
 
This way also, a system could have other versions of licenses, such as:
 
 
 
<pre>
 
cc-attribution-2.5--machine.rdf
 
cc-attribution-2.5--machine.xml
 
 
 
cc-attribution-2.5-be-human.txt
 
cc-attribution-2.5-de.html
 
cc-attribution-2.5--human.odt
 
 
 
cc-attribution-2.5-pt_BR-lawyer.txt
 
cc-attribution-2.5-es.html
 
cc-attribution-2.5--lawyer.rtf
 
</pre>
 
 
 
=== Forms ===
 
 
 
==== Human-Readable ====
 
 
 
This would be the human readable commons deed that is included with a license.
 
 
 
==== Lawyer-Readable ====
 
 
 
This would be the legalese for lawyers and courts to read that is specific and really the highest level (most abstract) version of a license.
 
 
 
==== Machine-Readable ====
 
 
 
This is the digital version of a license that is to be read by software (machines).
 
 
 
== Operating Systems ==
 
 
 
=== Linux ===
 
 
 
==== Path ====
 
 
 
===== System-level =====
 
 
 
/usr/share/licenses
 
 
 
===== User-level =====
 
 
 
~/.licenses/
 
 
 
''Please help us fill this out :)''
 
 
 
=== Mac OS X ===
 
 
 
==== Path ====
 
 
 
===== System-level =====
 
 
 
/Library/Application\ Support/Licenses
 
 
 
===== User-level =====
 
 
 
~/Library/Application\ Support/Licenses
 
 
 
=== Windows ===
 
 
 
==== Path ====
 
 
 
===== System=level =====
 
 
 
C:\%COMMONFILES%\licenses
 
 
 
===== User-level =====
 
 
 
C:\%APPDATA%\licenses (for local use)
 
 
 
== Filetype Mapping ==
 
 
 
There should be a simple mechanism for mapping known filetypes to types of licenses that can be used with a type of content. There should also be some mechanism for recognizing preferences and possible violations of licenses.
 
 
 
=== Questions ===
 
 
 
* How does this fit in with mimetypes?
 
* How can these preferences be dealt with?
 
* Is dealing with possible violation too DRM-like?
 
 
 
== Preferences ==
 
 
 
This is a section TBD on how to deal with preferred licenses and also licenses whose filetype/mime-type mapping is not known.
 
 
 
== Offline vs. Online ==
 
 
 
There needs to be away to use web services (like [[Web_Services_Client_Implementations|CC Web Services]]) to get the most up-to-date versions of licenses and as a fallback, use the on-disk versions of licenses. Also, some people and systems might not have web access, so there is a definite need for a place for these files to exist in an operating system. Also, most software just includes a license for source code and they forget that the GNU GPL is not for content. Thus, having a local link to licenses would promote licensing individual content distributed in an operating system through a distro to license-up and be legal.
 
 
 
NOTE: This is a long-time down the road, and the current recommendation is to use a systems package management facilities.
 
 
 
== TODO ==
 
 
 
* Flesh out [[#Offline vs. Online]] section
 
* Add more to the [[#Preferences]] section
 
* Need to get reviews of this spec
 
* Need to get reviews of the [[#Naming]] component of this spec.
 

Latest revision as of 17:35, 4 March 2008

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