Template talk:Infobox software licence

message: This template has a parameter for marking a license as "FSF approved".  The FSF doesn't approve licenses, at least not in the formal way that the OSI does, so what guidance should we offer on how to set this? RossPatterson 23:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The FSF has a page that lists licenses . They are categorized in  GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses, GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses, Non-Free Software Licenses. FSF approved means that the FSF says that the license in the template is a free software license. There is not an approval process like OSI does, you can't submit new licenses to be approved, so what about changing the name in "FSF says this is a free software license" --Argento3 14:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sure, but can we find a way to say it that's shorter?  Maybe just "Free Software"? RossPatterson 22:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Free Software (with a link to the Free Software Definition) is ok for me, it's more consistent with the FSF naming, approved is more OSI-like. --Argento3 23:39, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Cool.  Done.  RossPatterson 00:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text:  I don't know if this was the right decision.  Not everyone agrees with the FSF's definition of free software.  For instance, some people go by the DFSG instead.  I think it should go back to FSF-approved. Superm401 - Talk 07:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ACK. With the difference that it should not state yes or no but free or non-free. The FSF doesn't certificate licenses, but divides them into these categories. Same as Debian-Legal.--Trac3R (talk) 11:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  What about FSF "Free Software" (including the quotes)?  That mentions both that it's FSF criteria, and that it's "Free Software" qualification by the relevant criteria. - Apotheon (talk) 20:59, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does "FSF Approved" mean? 

message: After seeing this template in use at BSD licenses, it occurs to me that the colored backgrounds for the approval elements are biased towards the idea the approvals are good and non-approvals are bad.  That appears to be a violation of the NPOV policy.  RossPatterson 23:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, most (Americans?) associate red with bad and green with good. But I also think that we need some sort of method of distinguishing these attributes based on color. Maybe black and white or some other scheme of opposing colors not associated with any concepts.--Cogburnd02 15:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, I don't think we need coloring at all.  Least of all red/green, which has bias connotations and which can't be discriminated by 10% of the male population. But I see now that the coloring doesn't come from this template, but rather from the  and  templates that this one asks people to use. I'm going to change a few to simply "yes" and "no" and see how it looks.  RossPatterson 21:48, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Approvals not NPOV? 

message: It would be useful to note if the license allows derivatives to be proprietary.
By the way, LGPL doesn't have this infobox. --Macrakis 21:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: LGPL is Done, and GPL too. RossPatterson 22:16, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compatibility with proprietary code 

message: I see that Apache License has used this template with GPL compatible =  - GPLv3.  That brings up an interesting point - is it worth having two fields, one for GPL2 and one for GPL3?  Increased compatility was, of course, a GPL3 design goal. RossPatterson 22:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Common Public License has something similar. RossPatterson 22:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I support this.  If no one objects, it should be added.  GPLv2 will remain an important license for the forseeable future, and GPLv3 is quickly becoming one. Superm401 - Talk 07:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compatitbility with GPL 2 or 3? 

message: According to the Debian License information page, Debian doesn't approve licenses: Lists are maintained by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Please note however, that the Debian project decides on particular packages rather than licenses in abstract, and the lists are general explanations. It is possible to have a package containing software under a "free" license with some other aspect that makes it non-free. Sometimes, debian-legal comments on a license in abstract, not applied to any particular software. While these discussion can suggest possible problems, often no firm answers can be reached until some specific software is examined. So what does "Debian approved" mean in this context?  RossPatterson 00:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thumperward's rewrite to use the  template changed "Debian approved" to "DFSG compatible", which neatly resolves this question.  Thanks!  RossPatterson (talk) 15:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I can't take the credit for this one, I'm afraid: User:NeutralPoint fixed it here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Debian doesn't approve licenses 

message: The copyright field is quite ambiguous when on the actual license page.  Many people are going to think it describes the kind of license, not the copyright on the text of the license.  What it is actually meant to describe is not all that important.  Almost all licenses are copyrighted by their author, and allow you to reproduce their text.  I suggest this field be removed. Superm401 - Talk 07:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I put it there because it is important to know if derivative licenses are possible. --Argento3 (talk) 13:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that's useful information, but I still think it's misleading to put in the infobox. Superm401 - Talk 13:22, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I just changed it to say Publisher. ViperSnake151 15:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright 

message: Any objection to adding a url parameter? TJRC (talk) 00:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added the slightly broader website, for use with licenses which may have whole sites and not just (or maybe instead of) canonical URLs. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. TJRC (talk) 21:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  url? 

message: The difference between the permission to linking with libs that use different licenses and copyleft is exactly... what? Maybe one of that fields should be thrown out as redundant. --Trac3R (talk) 11:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The LGPL is both (weakly) copyleft and linkable as a library with software that is distributed under a different license, at least in theory. - Apotheon (talk) 15:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linking/Copyleft 

message: This template adds articles automatically to :Category:Free and open-source software licenses. In general have categories added manually is a bad thing. It leads to too many misclassifications. So unless there's a really good reason to keep the automatic category inclusion, I suggest we remove it. Jason Quinn (talk) 01:43, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give an example where this has caused problems? Belorn (talk) 06:59, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ubuntu (typeface)... it's a font with a redirect to the article. Somebody used the template on the article and already included the category on the redirect. As a font, this article does not logically belong in the category. This type of problem is always a danger with automatic categorization. There's really no reason to use it unless they are for grouping articles that use the template itself. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:01, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

text: Not only that, but the way it was coded introduced unwanted extra whitespace below the template. I've removed the auto-categorisation per WP:TEMPLATECAT. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:33, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template should not add categories automatically 

message: "Copyfree" is not a common criterion for evaluating software licences.
More precisely, the term is unknown and has no widespread use and it seems this template is being abused as a stage to promote it.
(Update: I clicked around the website .  The "support" page lists no supporters and the "projects" page just lists a script for comparing licences and a note about wanting to find time to work on the web site.  I think this violates WP:SOAP.)
. Gronky (talk) 20:41, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd assumed this had already been removed. It's gone now anyway. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

text: It had been removed, argued about, and re-added when no substantive arguments in favor of removal could be supported by the people in favor of removing it at the time. - Apotheon (talk) 19:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

text: By the way, "support" is not the same as "supporters", so I'm not sure why the fact the support page lists no supporters is a problem, and I'm confused by the fact you apparently only saw one line of text on the "projects" page. - Apotheon (talk) 19:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

text: If it comes to dealing with history, copyfree licenses exist much longer than copyleft licenses. Especially in the camp of *BSD-using people it might be way more common to release and distribute code under a copyfree license. I fail to see how this criterion is of no relevance for wiki and also fail to see how publishing information about this would be violating WP:SOAP. -- 80.219.255.181 (talk) 20:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion: remove "copyfree" 

message: I believe it would be useful to have a new field named  to hold the related SPDX license code.  There is a trend toward using these standardized codes when discussing software licenses.  In addition, they are somewhat machine readable (using grep for instance) in source code and text-based documentation.  With best wishes.  RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 08:44, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Reference to a license's SPDX identifier (as is the proper name) makes sense to me too. I've given it a shot in the template sandbox, see example for GNU GPL on the testcases page. Looks a bit exhaustive on the GPL (as it has both version and "or later" complications), suggestions welcome, also speak up if anyone opposes to adding it in the first place.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirkgaard (talk • contribs) 17:23, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  New field request: SPDX code 

message: Some software licenses, such as GPLv3.0 and the BSD license family, are approved as meeting the Definition of Free Cultural Works, as described here: [1]. I suggest to add this as a new, optional Yes/No field. NicolausPrime (talk) 21:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  New field suggestion: Free Cultural Works approved