cc @armijnhemel -- do you have any opinions?

otherwise, lgtm!

Personally I would not remove the COPYING file as it has been a convention for decades and people tend to look for either COPYING, LICENSE, LICENCE, and so on. A bit of duplication isn't a sin, as long as the info is kept in sync.

so to be clear: adding it to README.md is fine, just don't remove the COPYING file :-)

@armijnhemel This keeps COPYING file, just removes notice out of it. The rationale is that it makes GitHub recognize that license and offer user-friendly metadata. For example of how it's going to look like, see: https://github.com/NixOS/ofborg/blob/released/LICENSE

IANAL and all, but this notice seems to be purely informative and doesn't change actual licensing terms (and for legal purposes it wouldn't matter in which file it is anyway).

Right. IANAL either, but we can summon one (although it might take a few days for him to appear) @silverhook

@yegortimoshenko I'm not sure if this is because of it being a fork, but I don't see GitHub recognizing anything about the license in your branch: https://github.com/transumption/nixpkgs/blob/201810/move-notice-to-readme/COPYING

@infinisil It's because it was not in HEAD. I've pushed it to master and it's been recognized: https://github.com/transumption/nixpkgs/blob/master/COPYING

+1 on this.
Solves: #25705

Still curious on @silverhook's take on it, of course. If it's really essential we can add it back, but it seems unusual enough that we're probably fine without it?

FWIW, I think @silverhook already answered this question here: #43575 (comment)

Legally speaking it matters little whether you have the notice in the README or LICENSE or COPYING. I think it’s OK where it is, but it would just as well fit well in either README or even FAQ. Personally, I would keep license text canonical and add further info in README.

Yup, looks OK to me.

Thank you 😄