Jens Axboe - 12.02.19, 17:16: > On 2/11/19 11:27 PM, Ben Finney wrote: > > Martin Steigerwald <martin.steigerw...@proact.de> writes: > >> Well the file has in its header: > >> > >> /* Fast hashing routine for a long. > >> > >> (C) 2002 William Lee Irwin III, IBM */ > >> > >> /* > >> > >> * Knuth recommends primes in approximately golden ratio to the > >> maximum * integer representable by a machine word for > >> multiplicative hashing. * Chuck Lever verified the effectiveness > >> of this technique: > >> * http://www.citi.umich.edu/techreports/reports/citi-tr-00-1.pdf > >> * > >> * These primes are chosen to be bit-sparse, that is operations on > >> * them can use shifts and additions instead of multiplications for > >> * machines where multiplications are slow. > >> */ > >> > >> It has been quite a while ago. I bet back then I did not regard > >> this > >> as license information since it does not specify a license. Thus I > >> assumed it to be GPL-2 as the other files which have no license > >> boiler plate. I.e.: Check file is it has different license, if > >> not, then assume it has license as specified in COPYING. > >> > >> Not specifying a license can however also mean in this context that > >> it has no license as the file contains copyright information from > >> another author. > > > > If a work (even one file) “has no license”, that means no special > > permissions are granted and normal copyright applies: All rights > > reserved, i.e. not redistributable. So, no license is grounds to > > consider a work non-free and non-redistributable. > > > > If, on the other hand, the file is to be free software, there would > > need to be a clear grant of some free software license to that > > work. > > > > Given the confusion over this file, I would consider it a > > significant > > risk to just assume we have GPLv2 permissions without being told > > that > > explicitly by the copyright holder. Rather, the reason we are > > seeking a clearly-granted free license for this one file, is > > because we are trying to replace a probably non-free file with the > > same code in it. > > > > It seems we need to keep looking, and in the meantime assume we have > > no free license in this file. > > FWIW, fio.c includes the following mention: > > * The license below covers all files distributed with fio unless > otherwise * noted in the file itself. > > followed by the GPL v2 license. I'll go through and add SPDX headers > to everything to avoid wasting anymore time on this nonsense.
Thank you, Jens, for settling this. I did not remember that one. It may very well be that I have seen this note as I initially packaged fio as my first package for Debian about 10 years ago. I forwarded your mail and the one from Domenico with the SPDX patch to Debian bug #922112 fio: hash.h is not DFSG compliant https://bugs.debian.org/922112 which I closed before as you told already that hash.c is GPL-2. Thanks, -- Martin
