Re: Libiberty licensing problems & solutions [DRAFT]

Joseph S. Myers
2003-06-03T18:34:17Z

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Nathanael Nerode wrote:

> PROBLEM 4.
> The following files have no explicit copyright notice or license (and
> are not autogenerated).
>
> ChangeLog
> README

These are straightforward. <http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_9.html>
says:

=========================================================================
Small supporting files, short manuals (under 300 lines long) and rough
documentation (README files, INSTALL files, etc) can use a simple
all-permissive license like this one:

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
=========================================================================

Put a copyright notice and that licence notice in the files (at the bottom
in the case of ChangeLog files; see
<http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_8.html>). The main work is determining
the copyright dates. It would be a good idea to do all the ChangeLog
files in GCC at once - for a ChangeLog file you can simply take the dates
of the entries in the file to determine the copyright dates, since
subsequent spelling corrections etc. are unlikely to be significant for
copyright.

> obstacks.texi

libiberty.texi has a comment:

@c This is generated from the glibc manual using a make-obstacks-texi.sh
@c script of Phil's. Hope it's accurate.
@include obstacks.texi

I.e., GFDL. This is a mess to sort out because of Cover Texts and
Invariant Sections. The glibc manual has some, the libiberty manual
doesn't although from <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-howto.html> it is
clear that actually the section containing the LGPL must be invariant
since it isn't modifiable (and the GFDL lacks unmodifiable removable
sections).

Apart from this, libiberty manual licensing is a mess in other ways. The
copyright date of 2001 (only) is probably wrong; it ought to use @copying
for the copying information, as is it doesn't get in the HTML manual; a
paragraph about passing through TeX that should only have been part of the
old GNU manual licence is still present; and it claims to include a copy
of the GFDL, but doesn't, though it should (but being shared by multiple
projects it can't use the common fdl.texi file otherwise used by GCC
manuals). The manual date and edition, referring to a particular GCC
version, should probably also be removed.

[I didn't include the libiberty and fastjar manuals in the conversion of
GCC manuals to use @copying, because of the lack at the time of a toplevel
makeinfo version check. We now have a toplevel requirement for texinfo
4.2 or later, so those manuals can be converted.]

And since the manual contains text extracted from comments, the dual
licensing of those comments needs blessing by the FSF.

All licensing fixes should also go on the GCC 3.3 branch so that it is
clear under what terms releases can be distributed.

--
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk