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[Bug-gnulib] missing licenses in gnulib


From: Robert Millan
Subject: [Bug-gnulib] missing licenses in gnulib
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 15:58:24 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040722i

[ putting debian-legal on CC ]

Hi!

I'm trying to prepare a Debian package of gnulib, but there seems to be some
legal problems we should sort out first.

According to the COPYING file, we can't assume GPL for any of the files in
the source tree.  This is a problem for files that are not explicitly licensed.
I've made an exhaustive list in the "lib" and "tests" directories:

  lib/alloca.c
  lib/atanl.c
  lib/diacrit.c
  lib/dirfd.h
  lib/getpagesize.h
  lib/lbrkprop.h
  lib/logl.c
  tests/test-stpncpy.c

The legal status of these is questionable and in some cases they're being
distributed illegaly (since copyright holder is not FSF).  I have omitted
from the check those files that were <15 lines in size since these could be
considered not significant for copyright purposes.

The worst problem, however, is in the "m4" and "modules" directories, where
most of the files are unlicensed.  Typicaly, these macros would be implicitly
licensed by a COPYING file, but there's no COPYING file covering them.  This
situation makes it illegal to use most of gnulib's macros in any program (even
GPLed ones).

There's also the problem with non-free documentation in "doc" directory (3
files), but I'm aware that for the FSF freedom isn't important for
documentation so I'm ommiting the list here.

-- 
 .''`.   Proudly running Debian GNU/kFreeBSD unstable/unreleased (on UFS2+S)
: :' :
`. `'    http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu
  `-




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