On 08/21/2009 01:17 PM, Tom Lane wrote: They are "Effectively equivalent", from a GPL compatibility perspective, and in the way that both licenses are permissive, but they are not in any way, identical. This is why they are not lumped together. This is silly. We use the "License:" field to track actual licensing data within Fedora, not any lies that upstream wishes to place in that field. If you're unwilling to stand behind the truth, then feel free to defer all flames around the fact that our license tag is accurate to me. So, we already do this, in as much as the 4-clause BSD is "BSD with advertising", and all other BSD variants are almost identical in language and rights. The MIT license, while similar in intent, is wholly different in both language and rights. As I've said to Josh Berkus in private, I am entirely unwilling to lie about the license of the package simply because upstream is more comfortable with the lie. If the PostgreSQL upstream wishes to continue lying about about their own license to the world, I cannot prevent them. There are four basic authorities on FOSS licensing in our community: The FSF, the OSI, Debian, and Fedora. Every single one of these entities agrees on what is the "BSD license": OSI: http://opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php FSF: http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#5 (linked from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD) Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/BSD Debian: http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license (linked from http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/) In fact, every one of them also agrees on what is the "MIT license" (to be fair, the FSF prefers it be referred to as the "X11 license"): OSI: http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php FSF: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#X11License (They refer to it as X11) Fedora: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/MIT Debian: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt (linked from http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/) If you compare the two licenses to the PostgreSQL license text: *** Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS NO OBLIGATIONS TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS. *** It is clear that the PostgreSQL license is MIT. In fact, we have been listing this exact text on the Fedora MIT page for some time now (added in July 2008): https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/MIT#Old_Style_with_legal_disclai... The fact that PostgreSQL came from UC Berkeley and that the text of the PostgreSQL license was written by the University of California, Berkeley, may make it a "Berkeley Systems License", but it does NOT make it the "BSD license". With all due respect to you and the PostgreSQL upstream, we're not about to start lying about the licensing found on code, for anyone, or for any reason. If the PostgreSQL community wants the Fedora packages to say "License: BSD", then they have a single method to achieve that goal: Relicense the code base under the terms of the "BSD license". ~spot