Not possible to upload new plugin (missing license)

[alexbruy]

When I try to upload a new plugin I got an error

There were errors reading plugin package (please check also your plugin's metadata). Cannot find LICENSE in the plugin package. This file is required, please consider adding it to the plugin package.

even though my plugin HAS a licence in the standard COPYING file.

[Xpirix]

I think the LICENSE file should be a file named LICENSE (without extension).
Please, see also https://plugins.qgis.org/publish/ for more details.

I hope this helps.

[alexbruy]

AFAIK COPYING is a standard name for a file containing license. And this convention is much older than your changes to the plugin repository backend. Also note that for example GitHub itself correctly recognizes COPYING as a valid license files.

[agiudiceandrea]

See also qgis/QGIS-Website#386 and qgis/QGIS-Documentation#9192.

[agiudiceandrea]

@Xpirix at https://plugins.qgis.org/publish/ it is mentioned to use the name LICENCE, not LICENSE. Which is the correct one?
See also https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html.en:

Add a COPYING file with a copy of the GNU GPL or GNU AGPL.

[alexbruy]

IMHO this should be reverted (and yes, I'm aware about all previous discussions on this topic, but still do not understand what is the motivation behind this change given that all QGIS plugins inherit license from the main project or at least should have a compatible license).

[Xpirix]

at https://plugins.qgis.org/publish/ it is mentioned to use the name LICENCE, not LICENSE. Which is the correct one?

@agiudiceandrea, it should be LICENSE, I've updated the one at https://plugins.qgis.org/publish/

[Xpirix]

@alexbruy We will discuss about this first and will let you know.

Regards.

[timlinux]

It should be simple enough that we just check for these variations:

• LICENSE
• COPYING

Licence is a spelling error so we should not support that.

@alexbruy if you don't agree with the general principle of requiring a license, better to go back to the original discussion / PSC and state your case there - we can revert it later if there is consensus to do so.

[timlinux]

@alexbruy ok I so went and read the QEP again relating to this and I think I better understand your comments now. Do you mean to say that if the license is defined in metadata.txt it is enough and we should not also need a LICENSE in the plugin folder? Doesnt GPL require that the license file is shipped with the code?

Alternatively did you mean that we should not require a license in any form (file or in metadata) because the license is implicit in linking to QGIS which is GPL?

CC @Xpirix