[yocto] Using A Proprietary Closed License Inside A Layer & Its Recipes

[Thomas A. F. Thorne MEng AUS MIET]

Good afternoon,

I am putting together a meta-company-name layer to hold some internal
code.  This will contain a few BSPs for our units, some internally
developed applications and a few config file patches.  I am having
trouble getting recipes to be related to the proprietary license.  

I have added "LICENSE" file to the root of the layer.  I have also added
a "licenses" directory that contains a single "companyname" file that
has our standard copyright boiler plate in it.  In the layer.conf file I
have added
LICENSE_PATH += "${LAYERDIR}/licenses"

When inside a recipe.bb file set:
LICENSE = "companyname"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://companyname;md5=260e42b87d2e3235853331775b597ad3"

I get set of errors from bitbake:
NOTE: Preparing RunQueue
NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
ERROR: recipe-0.1-r0 do_configure: QA Issue: recipe: LIC_FILES_CHKSUM
points to an invalid file:
/home/thomasthorne/work/yocto/build-lib/tmp/work/all-poky-linux/recipe/0.1-r0/companyname
[license-checksum]
ERROR: recipe-0.1-r0 do_configure: Fatal QA errors found, failing task.
ERROR: recipe-0.1-r0 do_configure: Function failed: do_qa_configure
ERROR: Logfile of failure stored in:
/home/thomasthorne/work/yocto/build/tmp/work/all-poky-linux/recipe/0.1-r0/temp/log.do_configure.13583
ERROR: Task 487
(/home/thomasthorne/work/yocto/meta-companyname/recipes-companyname/recipe/recipe_0.1.bb,
do_configure) failed with exit code '1'
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 1557 tasks of which 1556 didn't need to
be rerun and 1 failed.

Should I be including a copy of the license in each recipe separately
instead and then using LIC_FILES_CHKSUM =
"file://companyname;md5=260e42b87d2e3235853331775b597ad3" (or pointing
at a header with the beginline=5; endline=10 syntax)? 

Is it only possible to use the special
LICENSE = "CLOSED"
license for licenses not already placed in the main license directory? 

Any help or pointers would be very gratefully received.  I have been
having a confusing couple of hours with this so far. 

Regards,

-- 
Thomas Thorne  Software Engineer  Net2Edge Limited


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 473 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/attachments/20170615/656d183f/attachment.pgp>