License and notice files

[Tim Kim <ti...@gmail.com>]

Hey everyone,

So to cut a proper release we need to include a license and notice file
that contains the various licenses and required third party notices that
our project uses [1]. Another requirement of these license and notice files
is that they be placed in the top level directory of our release [2]. I was
thinking that when we generate our release using the coho tool, it'll look
into each platform repo for these notice/license files, combine them into a
master notice/license file, and place that in the top level directory of
the release. So it'll look something like:

release/:

NOTICE
LICENSE
bin/
src/
doc/


For coho to combine these license/notice files there's going to be some
overlap to worry about. For example, each license/notice file starts out
with the same legal jargon as well the possibility of using the same code
with the same license between platforms. Which means it'd be nice if we
could have some delimiters in the license/notice files to make string
compares easier.

Perhaps another way we could go is to have the top level notice and license
file stating that there are lower level notice and license files and to
look for them if a user is so inclined. It'd be easier since it's less
work, but I'm not certain if that's okay. If a mentor could be so kind to
comment on that, that'd be great.

In any case, a quick review of the repos show that ios, android, and bb
have the notice and license files whereas the other repos either just have
a license file or none. So I think it'll fall upon the platform maintainers
to keep these up to date as well making sure they are complete.


[1]:
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/releasemanagement.html#best-practice-license
[2]: http://apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#notice
-- 
Timothy Kim

Re: License and notice files

[Brian LeRoux <b...@brian.io>]

+1 to Patrick's technique. This is a human problem not one for a
automagic string parsing. Each platform should maintain a NOTICE and
LICENSE file and the release dist should have the same at the top
level.



On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 3:20 PM, Patrick Mueller <pm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 18:02, Tim Kim <ti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So to cut a proper release we need to include a license and notice file
>> ...
>>
>
> You might want to look at the LICENSE and NOTICE files in weinre:
>
>    https://github.com/pmuellr/incubator-cordova-weinre
>
> Jukka has reviewed these and thinks they're ready to go, but ... we'll see
> :-)
>
> My philosophy is:
>
> - the LICENSE and NOTICE files are in the top-level directory of the git
> repo, and those same files will be in the src, bin, and doc release
> archives.
>
> - I maintain those by hand, there's no easy way to automate the maintenance
>
> --
> Patrick Mueller
> http://muellerware.org

Re: License and notice files

[Patrick Mueller <pm...@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 18:02, Tim Kim <ti...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So to cut a proper release we need to include a license and notice file
> ...
>

You might want to look at the LICENSE and NOTICE files in weinre:

    https://github.com/pmuellr/incubator-cordova-weinre

Jukka has reviewed these and thinks they're ready to go, but ... we'll see
:-)

My philosophy is:

- the LICENSE and NOTICE files are in the top-level directory of the git
repo, and those same files will be in the src, bin, and doc release
archives.

- I maintain those by hand, there's no easy way to automate the maintenance

-- 
Patrick Mueller
http://muellerware.org