Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] checklicenses.py

[João Valverde <joao.valverde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/08/2016 11:15 PM, Guy Harris wrote:
> On Aug 8, 2016, at 3:10 PM, João Valverde <joao.valverde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Mainly what I was trying to say is that this dual licensing distinction can already be handled with path-specific exceptions so I guess I'm indifferent to adding more code for this.
>
> I view path-specific exceptions as workarounds for deficiencies in licensecheck, and would prefer to have as few path-specific exceptions as possible.  Ideally, the only places where path-specific exceptions would be used would be places where licensecheck would need AI rather than pattern matching to identify the license. :-)


A very reasonable point of view IMO. :-)

To summarize the issue addressed by change 16957, licensecheck.pl 
conflates "BSD and GPLv2" to be the same as "BSD or GPLv2", with its 
simple regex based logic.

We are OK with "BSD or GPLv2" but not "BSD and GPLv2", so whitelisting 
"BSD GPLv2", as licensecheck reports both cases, would be wrong.

We can either add a path-specific exception for this saying "BSD GPLv2 
is really just BSD for these files" or fix licensecheck.pl to be smarter 
about it.