Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] compiler: Drop 'public domain' header from file

[Peter Maydell]

On 23 September 2016 at 14:37, Felipe Franciosi <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On 23 Sep 2016, at 14:24, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> On 23 September 2016 at 13:51, Felipe Franciosi <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> As discussed on the list [1], having a comment stating that this file
>>> is "public domain" is arguably wrong and not legally binding. By
>>> removing this statement from the header, the file is under the
>>> project-wide GPLv2+ license.
>>>
>>> [1] http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-09/msg06151.html
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Felipe Franciosi <address@hidden>
>>> ---
>>> include/qemu/compiler.h | 2 --
>>> 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/include/qemu/compiler.h b/include/qemu/compiler.h
>>> index 338d3a6..9d6d09b 100644
>>> --- a/include/qemu/compiler.h
>>> +++ b/include/qemu/compiler.h
>>> @@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
>>> -/* public domain */
>>> -
>>> #ifndef COMPILER_H
>>> #define COMPILER_H
>>
>> Can we have a comment specifically saying what license it is under,
>> please? Something like
>>
>> /* compiler.h: macros to abstract away compiler specifics
>> *
>> * This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.
>> * See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
>> */
>
> I'm not against that, but the consensus seems to be that what's currently in 
> LICENSE is clear enough:
> http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob_plain;f=LICENSE;hb=HEAD
>
> 2) ... Source files with no licensing information
> are released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your
> option) any later version.

That clause is intended to deal with random leftover files which
don't have an explicit statement for some reason (usually historical),
not as a justification for increasing the number of files without
licensing info. In an ideal world all our files would have a
header comment giving the licensing info and copyright details.

thanks
-- PMM