From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.lib.musl.general/9624 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Szabolcs Nagy Newsgroups: gmane.linux.lib.musl.general Subject: Re: musl licensing Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 11:31:25 +0100 Message-ID: <20160316103125.GB9862@port70.net> References: <20160315224126.GA5402@brightrain.aerifal.cx> Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1458124304 2577 80.91.229.3 (16 Mar 2016 10:31:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:31:44 +0000 (UTC) To: musl@lists.openwall.com Original-X-From: musl-return-9637-gllmg-musl=m.gmane.org@lists.openwall.com Wed Mar 16 11:31:44 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mother.openwall.net ([195.42.179.200]) by plane.gmane.org with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ag8jt-0003s6-AI for gllmg-musl@m.gmane.org; Wed, 16 Mar 2016 11:31:41 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 18290 invoked by uid 550); 16 Mar 2016 10:31:38 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-ID: Original-Received: (qmail 18272 invoked from network); 16 Mar 2016 10:31:37 -0000 Mail-Followup-To: musl@lists.openwall.com Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20160315224126.GA5402@brightrain.aerifal.cx> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.linux.lib.musl.general:9624 Archived-At: * Rich Felker [2016-03-15 18:41:26 -0400]: > On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 02:59:24PM -0700, Petr Hosek wrote: > > The first issue is the lack of clarity around per-file licensing and > > copyright attribution. > > It's always been my intent to be document copyright status of the > various parts of musl in detail in the COPYRIGHT file. If adding > one-line notices to non-trivial source files would help gain > acceptence by lawyers, I don't think that would be terribly > controversial. there should be a way to document copyright without changing source files. if google has some best practice for that we can follow it i think. (one line comment is ok, but i'd prefer no license related text in source files.) > > The other issue is the claim that some files > > (in particular, the public headers and C runtime) are in the public > > domain. While this might be technically correct, it's not legally > > sound and we would be legally unable to use these files without them > > being placed under copyright and an open source license. The most > > appropriate way of addressing both issues would be to include a > > copyright notice in individual source and header files. > > As far as the public headers, it's my view that the vast majority do > not contain any copyrightable original content. For the standard > interfaces they all just match the interface requirements of ISO C and > POSIX; only some specific type definitions and numeric constants are > implementation-specific, and these are just minimal factual > definitions matching ABIs/kernel. Some places have a very small amount > of what you might call 'code' in public headers, but they're all the > obvious/only way to express what they're doing, not anything creative. bionic actually generates its kernel interface headers from (gpl) code and each file has the comment: *** This header was automatically generated from a Linux kernel header *** of the same name, to make information necessary for userspace to *** call into the kernel available to libc. It contains only constants, *** structures, and macros generated from the original header, and thus, *** contains no copyrightable information. so it is ok to claim 'not copyrightable', we just have to find a way to do this without cluttering each header file. > > address these issues. We believe that our company's interpretation of > > the copyright and authorship is the same across the entire industry i don't believe that. > > license). Furthermore, all past and future contributors will have to > > to sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA). Since the majority of > > musl authors are present in this forum, we're reaching out to you to > > ask whether this is something you would agree with and also to start > > the discussion within the wider musl community. > > I don't think anything CLA-like is acceptable to our community. All > the evidence points to it being a huge barrier to entry for new > contributors. There is plenty of documentation of development process > in the git log and on the mailing list to show that our contributors > are submitting code with the intent that it be used in musl under the > project's license. linux kernel uses Signed-off-by: in commit messages for this https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/SubmittingPatches?id=refs/tags/v4.5#n416 i think even that's superfluous (the Author: is already there we just have to document what it means) ideally anonymous contributions would work too in some way.