Shouldn't the licence agreement in the Windows installer include the BSD licence?

[jamescrake-merani]

Describe the bug
Currently, the licence agreement window that first pops up when you run the Windows installer contains details about SasView's original funding source, participating facilities, and a request to acknowledge the software if its used in a publication. However, there doesn't seem to be any text from the BSD licence, which I'd expect to see in this section.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Download a version of the SasView installer
2. Launch it
3. See licence agreement

Expected behavior
See the BSD licence.

SasView version:

• Version: 6.1.0b2

Operating system:

• OS: Windows 11

[llimeht]

Interesting catch ... the licence actually requires that binary distributions include the licence text. The files bundled up by pyinstaller do not appear to contain that text; the windows installer does in a click-wrap wizard step but it is not otherwise in the interface or on disk. I guess the mac installer won't have it at all.

For 6.1.0, the licence could be slotted into the documentation as a minimal change at this stage. Alternatively, including this information in the About box would be normal. Happily, the wheel does include the licence details.

[krzywon]

This was fixed in #3480. Can we close this, @jamescrake-merani?

[jamescrake-merani]

The fix was only for the application itself, not the Windows installer. We should probably change the licence text for the Windows installer in a future release.

[rozyczko]

Modified the INNO install script to point it to the main directory LICENSE.TXT.
https://github.com/SasView/sasview/tree/3477-licence-agreement-in-installer

[llimeht]

There are two parts to the answer to the question in this bug title ("Shouldn't the licence agreement in the Windows installer include the BSD licence?"):

• the installer does not need to show the BSD licence: it can do so but it does not need to (and currently does not); there is no legal requirement for it to do so and the normal approach in the free software community is not to put unnecessary click-throughs on things. No-one asks you to consent to the licence of ls prior to seeing a directory listing.
• the installer can show a request for acknowledgements: it doesn't need to but it can (and currently does); for a project like SasView, acks are the currency of success and this is the most important thing we want users to see.

The legal compliance bit of having the licence in the distributable is already dealt with (via #3480) and so there is no current technical/legal bug to solve. That would mean that this bug and #3534 can both be closed.

If we would like to have a discussion about "should the installer show lots of legalistic crap it doesn't need to and drop the request for acknowledgement" then that's a different discussion for a different bug or UI-ADR even. (And my phrasing of that question lets you know my feeling on it.)