The project I am working on now needs to include license files for all of the 3rd party code that it includes. Since license files are not included in distribution packages, the process for doing this is exceedingly complex, error prone, and in some cases, impossible. The build process builds URLs to license files in package source code repositories based on version number, but this is dependent upon several things…
1. The source code repository is accessible via the Internet and still exists. 2. There is a tag for each version (not always true). 3. Tags follow a consistent naming pattern with respect to version numbers (not always true).
I believe that it makes sense to provide a standard means for distribution packages to include license files and then encourage package authors to use it.