[libvirt] global license cleanup [was: Re: [PATCH v5 1/9] pvs: add driver skeleton]
On 05/02/2012 10:05 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
On 05/02/2012 09:59 AM, Dmitry Guryanov wrote:
>>> + * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
>>> + * License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
>>> + * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
>>> 02111-1307 USA
>> Not a problem with your patch, per se, but we really should be using the
>> FSF-preferred form of LGPLv2+ boilerplate that uses a URL rather than a
>> street address (that's a global cleanup to all of libvirt).
>
> Could you give me a link, where such header can be found, please ?
That should be a global cleanup. I'll look into tackling that.
More to the point, don't worry about it for your patch series. Here's
the latest recommendations:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html
Among other things, we have the following bugs:
- we included the LGPL in a file named COPYING.LIB, but the
recommendation these days is to name it COPYING.LESSER (lots of files
refer to this license file, so cleaning this up will touch a big chunk
of the tree)
- the FSF states that the LGPL is a set of additional permissions on top
of the GPL, and therefore any package that includes COPYING.LESSER must
also include the GPL in the file named COPYING, but we copied the LGPL
into COPYING.
- we have portions of the libvirt package that are GPLv3 (separate
executables that link against GPL libraries; although our main
executables of libvirtd and virsh should be LGPL), as another reason why
we must include the GPL text in COPYING
- we might as well update our README to mention the license situation
- the FSF recommends the following preamble to every copyrighted file:
For programs that are more than one file, it is better to replace
“this program” with the name of the program, and begin the statement with a line saying
“This file is part of NAME”. For instance,
This file is part of Foobar.
Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Foobar. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>;.
This statement should go near the beginning of every source file, close to the copyright
notices. When using the Lesser GPL, insert the word “Lesser” before “General” in all three
places.
of course, we'd use version 2.1 instead of 3.
This is the sort of thing that should be automated via syntax check, so
that adding new files don't make the situation worse. But with over
2200 files in libvirt.git, it will take me some time to audit everything.
--
Eric Blake eblake(a)redhat.com +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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