Re: [Xen-devel] ACPI builder re-licensing

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth.xen@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On 13 Jul 2016, at 19:19, Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On 07/13/2016 10:30 AM, Lars Kurth wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> OTOH, we can at least
>>> review the patch first here on xen-devel without bothering people from
>>> that list with revisions. So yes, I will.
> 
> 
> Which LGPL version are we using?
> 
> Most libxc and all libxl files say it's strictly 2.1: "... version 2.1
> only. with the special exception on linking described in file LICENSE"
> (with LICENSE file not provided, which I assume meaning that it's
> vanilla 2.1).

I think we should pick a specific version, because the COPYING file in xen.git 
states - although not very clearly - to pick a specific license with a specific 
version. Given that libxc/libxl is intended to be LGPL 2.1, we should go for 
2.1.

It may also make sense to start using SPDX License Identifiers (see 
http://wiki.spdx.org/view/Technical_Team/SPDX_Meta_Tags#Tag_Format)

alongside the (c) notice for files which do not use GPLv2, as it reduces the 
scope for mistakes and increases the chances of mistakes being picked up by 
reviewers.

In this case
SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1

> However, some files in libxc are less restrictive in this regard:
> "either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.".

We have a similar issue with some GPLv2 files in Xen, where contributors appear 
to have forgotten to delete the "or (at your option) any later version", in 
some files by mistake. 

In xen./git COPYING we state 
   5 Most files in this repository are licensed under the terms of the GNU
   6 General Public License (GPL), a copy of which is attached at the end
   7 of this notice. Note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as
   8 the files in this repository are concerned is _this_ particular
   9 version of the license (i.e., *only* v2, not v2.2 or v3.x or
  10 whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

GPLv2 files where "or (at your option) any later version" is in the file's (c) 
header contradict the COPYING file. And legally, it is not clear whether the 
COPYING file or the (c) header has precedence and whether "either version 2 of 
the License, or (at your option) any later version" is explicit or not. 

For this reason, I have an action to make a proposal to clean up these 
inconsistencies in the next few weeks. Forgetting to delete "or (at your 
option) any later version" is a mistake easily made. In particular when the 
contributor of a new file copies the boilerplate license text from gnu.org and 
is not aware that "or (at your option) any later version" has to be deleted. 

This has been causing some issues and confusion with new contributors, who have 
internal policies that prevent them from contributing to projects that contain 
GPLv3 code.

We don't want to add more such cases that later need to be cleaned up.

Cheers
Lars
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel