[License-discuss] plain text license versions?

[Lawrence Rosen]

Is distribution of the *link* to the license sufficient compliance with this requirement? 

/Larry (from my tablet and brief) 

Luis Villa <luis at tieguy.org> wrote:

>On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>> Karl Fogel wrote:
>>> Many coders expect to find plaintext license terms in a LICENSE or
>>> COPYING file, directly in the source tree.
>>
>> I'd count that as another reason *not* to provide plain text license files. I think it would be FAR more useful to have a simple license statement in the source tree of each program that points to the OFFICIAL version of that license on the OSI website. This also avoids the duplication of text -- with potential transcription or legal errors -- in many source code trees, and completely avoids the need to actually read the licenses if one trusts OSI.
>>
>> Doesn't CC do that, in a way, with their license logos?
>
>More specifically, CC does it with the requirement in the license that
>attribution notices link to the canonical text. Many OSS software
>licenses, unfortunately, require distribution of the actual text of
>the license.
>
>Luis