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Re: [PATCH] clone: Warn if clone lacks LICENSE or COPYING file

From
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date
Mar 23, 2015, 21:00 UTC
Message-ID
<CACBZZX7JRAavMV4W91k-3ABYj8NPevBvF+CQKSMASYMjghB5pg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<E1Ya5V2-0001bT-QE@rmm6prod02.runbox.com>
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 5:46 PM, David A. Wheeler <dwheeler@dwheeler.com> wrote:
Show 14 quoted lines
> Junio C Hamano:
>>    An approach that checks only the top-level directory for fixed
>>    filename pattern would not be an effective way to protect the
>>    cloners, either.
>
> I disagree, I think it's remarkably effective. *Many* projects
> do this, including git itself. After all, many humans need to find out the licensing
> basics too; having a simple convention for *finding* it helps humans and tools alike.
> It's not even limited to open source software; developers of proprietary materials
> (software or now) *also* typically want to declare licensing.
>
> Sure, the top-level licensing text might be incomplete, but having that information
> provides a big help, and it's what most people rely on anyway. Indeed, a *lack*
> of this is a sign of trouble, which is exactly what warnings are good for.

I don't think you're going to find people disagreeing with you that it's good to have license information where appropriate, but Git is the wrong tool to warn about this.

It's a generic content tracking tool, it shouldn't be warning on the assumption that what you're tracking is a) an open source project and b) that you care to be notified about some arbitrary files being missing.

A lot of Git repositories don't care at all about licensing, and having git-clone warn about this would just be useless noise most of the time. E.g. anything I put on gist.github.com, the code hundreds of people contribute to at work (we never distribute it anywhere, so a license would be pointless). I even have open source projects myself where there's no LICENSE or COPYING files since that would be redundant to notices in the files themselves, but I digress.

Previous: David A. WheelerNext: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
Message 6 of 10 in “clone: Warn if clone lacks LICENSE or COPYING file”
  1. clone: Warn if clone lacks LICENSE or COPYING fileDavid A. Wheeler, Mar 21, 2015
  2. Dennis KaarsemakerMar 21, 2015
  3. Stefan BellerMar 22, 2015
  4. Junio C HamanoMar 22, 2015
  5. David A. WheelerMar 23, 2015
  6. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 23, 2015
  7. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonMar 22, 2015
  8. David A. WheelerApr 3, 2015
  9. Junio C HamanoApr 3, 2015
  10. Kevin DMar 26, 2015

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