Re: musl licensing

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 11:30:38PM -0400, Kurt H Maier wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 05:31:48PM -0600, Anthony J. Bentley wrote:
> > 
> > Post-Berne no copyright statement is needed at all. Marking license
> > terms, authors and dates in individual files is strictly a convenience
> > factor for those using or reading the code.
> > 
> 
> Yes.  However, musl has had more than one person express a desire for
> per-file copyright notifications.  None of these people have expressed
> interest in needlessly including a year.  With this information, we can
> ask if 
> 
> /* Copyright the musl authors.  Available under a ___-style license, which
>    can be found at http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/COPYRIGHT */
> 
> would meet their needs.

Generally I don't think people like (and I don't like) URL references
to licenses because there's no guarantee that they don't change or
linkrot. Referencing the copy in the top-level source tree COPYRIGHT
file avoids that but obviously doesn't meet the needs of someone
including it in another tree.

If Google's lawyers are happy without adding per-file notices (which I
haven't seen them asking for in any of the clarifying follow-up
emails; correct me if I'm wrong) then I think we should treat this as
a separate issue aside from trying to resolve the current license
concerns they have, and follow up on it later.

Rich