license of wrap files and meson files

[pobrn]

In many cases wrap files are directly integrated into the repositories of various projects, however, they contain no SPDX license identifiers or similar. Manually adding them is not ideal because they are not preserved during updates. Specifying any kind of license using REUSE.toml, .dep5, etc. is possible, but it is a bit of work.

1. the repository mentions the MIT license, does that apply to all wrap and meson files?
2. would it be possible to inject an SPDX annotation into the wrap files (downloaded using meson wrap install)?

[eli-schwartz]

Historically they've always been MIT unless otherwise noted, I believe. The actual wraps themselves all contain LICENSE.build, it's just that that file is by default created by create_release.py by copying it from the root of the wrapdb repository.

[bgilbert]

To clarify, LICENSE.build originates from the project's packagefiles directory in this repo, if it exists there, or from COPYING otherwise. You can find it in the unpacked source tree produced by the wrap.

While LICENSE.build applies to the project's Meson files, the layout of the source tree (both in Git and after unpacking a wrap) suggests that file doesn't apply to the wrap file itself, which would mean .wrap files are always MIT. (In the US I think there's some question how copyrightable a wrap file even is; it's mostly facts in a well-defined structure. Not a lawyer, not legal advice.)

It would be possible to inject a SPDX annotation into the wrap files, though not retroactively. SPDX annotations are... kind of ugly, but would indeed help some projects. Reopening to consider that possibility.

[eli-schwartz]

Hmm, yeah, adding SPDX comments seems more or less unobjectionable to me. That being said, I do consider it an open-and-shut case: *.wrap files are NOT copyrightable, though if they were, they come from this MIT repository, and previously (per-wrap repositories) lived alongside meson.build + LICENSE.build as upstream.wrap