[Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

5hridhyan · 2026-06-01 13:27:16

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PKGBUILD#license

Shows
For custom licenses the identifier should be either LicenseRef-license-name or custom:license-name, if they are not covered by the common families mentioned above. The corresponding license text must be placed in directory /usr/share/licenses/pkgname

but, https://github.com/BlackArch/blackarch-config-xfce/ has no license at all, in that case, if I wanted to make a PKGBUILD, what should I use in it's license field?

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-06-02 02:22:54)

seth · 2026-06-01 15:12:07

If it were *only* config files I'd question whether those could be copyrighted at all, but there's a theme w/ some icons.
You cannot just assume a license (any entry there is potentially false) - omit the field and inquire the licence upstream.

5hridhyan · 2026-06-01 15:34:06

Got it.
I've created an issue on GitHub:
https://github.com/BlackArch/blackarch- … e/issues/9

Guess I should wait for ages to get a reply from them
Will mark this as [clarified] when I get a response from them...

daniel_shub · 2026-06-01 18:36:49

You can download the package directly from the Black Arch mirrors: https://us.mirrors.cicku.me/blackarch/b … kg.tar.zst
If you want to package it for the AUR, which seems a little weird and probably violates some rule, the PKGBUILD is available: https://github.com/BlackArch/blackarch/ … e/PKGBUILD

The black arch team used 'custom:unknown' as the license, which seems a little weird for the devs to not know how they licensed their software. It seems the team does know the license since the PKGBUILD also refers to https://github.com/BlackArch/blackarch/ … er/COPYING. It is not clear why they did not include that as the license file in the package.

5hridhyan · 2026-06-01 19:06:42

Thanks for letting me know! I didn't quite catch which rule this would violate, though.
while IK it can be installed directly from the BA repository, adding their entire repo to a standard Arch system can cause major maintenance headaches (like pacman yelling at me about version mismatches, signature keys, or package replacements)...
my thought was that packaging the artwork/theme separately in the AUR would make it available without requiring users to enable the full BlackArch repository
Furthermore, their official package forces global configuration files into /etc/skel/ and pulls in 'blackarch-menus' as a mandatory dependency. I wanted to package this for the AUR to handle it cleanly as a pure asset extraction (GTK, xfwm4, and Plank themes only)...

So, am I misunderstanding the AUR policy here?

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-06-01 19:08:08)

seth · 2026-06-01 19:17:03

You cannot package anything in the "official binary repositories" for the AUR, but that does not cover the blackarch repo - if there's no other AUR package for this, you're not obviously violating any rules (from this side, blackarch might object)
Adding the blackarch repo to your pacman.conf arguably makes you run blackarch now, not archlinux.

KevinCrrl · 2026-06-01 19:44:26

5hridhyan wrote:

Guess I should wait for ages to get a reply from them

You could consider asking at the BlackArch Matrix, perhaps they'll respond faster.

https://matrix.to/#/#BlackArch:matrix.org

seth · 2026-06-01 20:51:58

Fwwi

The black arch team used 'custom:unknown' as the license, which seems a little weird

weird as it sounds, it might actually be the truth (lost contact to the original creator or so) and if this is used upstream you can very plausibly copy that (it's not your assessment or for lack of proper research)

5hridhyan · 2026-06-02 02:21:54

KevinCrrl wrote:

You could consider asking at the BlackArch Matrix, perhaps they'll respond faster.

Thank you so much! They actually responded "faster" than I ever expected

in matrix, killab33z responded saying
The actual BlackArch PKGBUILD for that shows custom:unknown for the license, so you can use the same.

seth wrote:

if this is used upstream you can very plausibly copy that (it's not your assessment or for lack of proper research)

Did you read their minds?

I've also asked clarification for another repo called blackarch-artwork, lets see what they will say for that. Guess Ik the answer https://github.com/BlackArch/blackarch/ … r/PKGBUILD

Marking as [Solved] Thanks everyone

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-06-02 02:36:08)

Arch Linux

#1 2026-06-01 13:27:16

[Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#2 2026-06-01 15:12:07

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#3 2026-06-01 15:34:06

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#4 2026-06-01 18:36:49

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#5 2026-06-01 19:06:42

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#6 2026-06-01 19:17:03

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#7 2026-06-01 19:44:26

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#8 2026-06-01 20:51:58

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

#9 2026-06-02 02:21:54

Re: [Solved]What should I use as license if the upstream repo has none?

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