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Re: Dual licensed package (dtc)



Joe Davis <joe.davis512%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> I'm working on adding U-Boot to pkgsrc as part of my work for Google
> Summer of Code; I'm hoping to commit it to pkgsrc-wip sometime over
> the next day or so.
>
> One of the U-Boot's build time dependencies is `dtc` the linux
> Device-Tree Compiler. Part of which is GPL, the other part of which is
> a library, dual licensed under GPL/BSD.
>
> I have to add dtc to pkgsrc-wip as well, so is it alright to denote
> the entire package as simply being under the more restrictive GPL
> license? Or is there a way that I should indicate a dual license?

If part is GPL and part is "GPL or BSD", then I would just set
LICENSE=gpl (expanded of course), and then a comment in the Makefile
that explains as concisely as you can that part is also available under
BSD.

The point of the LICENSE tag is to avoid people being surprised at
pkgsrc building/installing packages that have objectionable licenses,
where objectionable is a personal preference and can be configured.  The
notion that someone who is ok with GPL code objecting to code that
additonally comes with permission to copy under the BSD license does not
seem credible to me.  We usually worry about people avoiding non-free
licenses, and some people want to avoid AGPL.

Thanks for asking and being careful about this.

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