Debian and at least some of its derivatives have long had a requirement that each package have a so-called "copyright file" which among other things is supposed to contain "a verbatim copy of its copyright information and distribution license". However, for certain widely-used licenses, copies are not bundled with individual packages, but instead a systemwide copy of each is installed in /usr/share/common-licenses. These include, from what I gather, the Apache License 2.0, some version of the Artistic License, each extant version of the GPL and LGPL, and (oddly) certain versions of the GFDL. I've been thinking recently that Fedora, and the derivatives of Fedora maintained by Red Hat engineers, would benefit from adopting a similar approach, though I wouldn't suggest using an identical set of licenses. I had a conversation with Neal Gompa yesterday and got the impression he did not consider this to be an entirely crazy idea. I have some concerns about the current Fedora practice of installing certain individual package license files (including license files that appear in thousands if not tens of thousands of Fedora packages in identical form) in /usr/share/licenses and think this particular Debian practice might be a marginal improvement in certain respects. Any thoughts on this idea? Richard