A clarification on GPL and contributions. torsdag den 1 april 2010 klockan 17:06 skrev Jesús M. Navarro detta: > Hi, Mats: > > On Thursday 01 April 2010 14:37:56 Mats Erik Andersson wrote: > > Dear mentors, > > > > The RFP reportee himself suggested GPL as the applicable license, > > which I now see is utterly nonsense. I could use the insights of > > those better understanding these matters. > > > > The only mention of GPL in the entire source archive are found > > in two specifications for building RPM-packages. Beyond that, > > the files produced using autotools contain the usual FSF attribution. > > > > The COPYING file obviously states the intention for a BSD-like license. On > the other hand, GPL on the RPM-build files is not incompatible with that but > that leaves the question about all the other source files. As long as the
The two GPL-licensed specifications were contributed by other people. Apart from the files generated by the autotools suite, I find no other explicit mention of contributed text in the source code itself. There are in AUTHORS named persons with pointers to functionality they improved, but apart from a single mention of a single individual in a single C-source file, the code additions are anonymous. > author of the COPYING file retains copyright for the whole lot (i.e. has not > copied anything from other sources), I think the best path would be approach > the upstream maintainer and ask him to clarify the situation of the other > copyrigth files. You can even go for the extra mile, once the author's > position is made clear to offer to patch yourself the files (after all, the > only thing it would be needed is adding a boilerplate header to all of them). > > Without this (IMHO) standard copyright laws are in effect which means you > can't even touch the non-stated files with a ten foot pole. > Do you mean that I am not allowed to patch (using source format 3.0-quilt) any of the code? At this time I know one compiler warning and some dubious IPv6-code that I probably would like to fix. The BSD-clause in COPYING allows modifications, so I do not understand how I should interpret the "ten foot pole". Please, tell me! Mats Erik Andersson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100401161348.ga6...@mea.homelinux.org
