Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] ui/gtk: Fix the license information

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 06:03:09PM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrangé <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 05:05:35PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
> >> The license information in this file is very messy. A short note at
> >> the beginning says GPL first, but the long boilerplate code then
> >> talks about "GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.0". First,
> >> there is no such version of the "GNU Lesser GPL", it only started with
> >> version 2.1. In version 2.0, it was still called "GNU Library GPL"
> >> instead. Second, you can easily get the license of this file wrong
> >> if you only quickly glance at the long boilerplate code.
> >> 
> >> Anyway, looking at the text of the LGPL (see COPYING.LIB in the top
> >> directory), the license clearly states in section "3." that one should
> >> rather replace the license information with the GPL information in
> >> such a case of a mixture instead. Thus let's clean up the confusing
> >> statements and use the proper GPL text only.
> >> 
> >> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <address@hidden>
> >> ---
> >>  ui/gtk.c | 20 ++++++++------------
> >>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
> >> 
> >> diff --git a/ui/gtk.c b/ui/gtk.c
> >> index 949b143..af7e5b2 100644
> >> --- a/ui/gtk.c
> >> +++ b/ui/gtk.c
> >> @@ -6,9 +6,6 @@
> >>   * Authors:
> >>   *  Anthony Liguori   <address@hidden>
> >>   *
> >> - * This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or 
> >> later.
> >> - * See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
> >
> > This part of the header was describing the license of the QEMU originated
> > code for gtk.c
> >
> >> - *
> >>   * Portions from gtk-vnc:
> >>   *
> >>   * GTK VNC Widget
> >> @@ -16,19 +13,18 @@
> >>   * Copyright (C) 2006  Anthony Liguori <address@hidden>
> >>   * Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden>
> >>   *
> >> - * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> >> - * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
> >> - * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
> >> - * version 2.0 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> >> + * This program 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 2 of the License, or
> >> + * (at your option) any later version.
> >>   *
> >> - * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
> >> + * This program 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
> >> - * Lesser General Public License for more details.
> >> + * General Public License for more details.
> >>   *
> >> - * 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., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  
> >> 02110-1301 USA
> >> + * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
> >> + * along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
> >
> > while this part of the header was describing the license of the original
> > GTK-VNC code that was copied into this file.
> >
> > Changing this text is not correct, because now it no longer describes
> > the original gtk-vnc license.
> >
> > If you want to change this file you'll need the main license text for
> > QEMU further up, *before* the line starting "Portions from gtk-vnc:"
> 
> No.  LGPL permits derived works to be licensed under GPL.
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

I wasn't debating that.

> Keeping the separate historical boiler-plate may feel polite.  But to
> figure out what exactly is LGPLed, you'd have to dig through history
> anyway.  So all it accomplishes is providing a hint that somewhere in
> history something could possibly be found that's still LGPLed and still
> useful.

I'm just saying that after this patch is applied, the text in the header
is misleading. It is suggesting that the GTK-VNC code that was copied
was under the GPLv2, where as it was actually under the LGPLv2 originally.

> > The bit about GTK-VNC could reasonably be simplified to
> >
> >     "Portions taken from gtk-vnc under the terms of the GNU
> >      Lesser General Public License 2.1 or later."

Regards,
Daniel
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