New review comment by Phicem on void-packages repository https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/30121#discussion_r1014876537 Comment: I think it's not as bad as it looks. The comment that you quoted above refers to the original code (first commit of the repo), which is downloadable from DLINK website. I tried to get into depth into what was released under GPL and what was not. ### In the original code - There is no general license information - the Makefile (and some other trivial config files and trivial scripts) have no author and no license information - most of the 333 source files (.h and .c) have license information (GPL2), except 39 files - there are 16 .c files without license information: - 2 files have no author information (`./core/rtw_wapi.c` and `./core/rtw_wapi_sms4.c`) - 12 files have an author name ("Cosa") (`./hal/OUTSRC-BTCoexist/HalBtc*`) - 2 files are Copyright Realtek (`./hal/rtl8192e/Hal8192EPwrSeq.c` and `./os_dep/linux/wifi_regd.c`) - there are 23 header files without license information. ### In current code Recent versions of the repo (which would be what would be packaged here) have even less license-less files: - the Makefile (and some other trivial config files and trivial scripts) still have no author or license information - all but 4 of the 512 source files (.h and .c) have license information (GPLv2) - there is 1 .c file without license information: - this file is `./hal/btc/halbtc8192e2ant.c` - this file mentions an author name ("Cosa") in the history section - this file exists in a different form in many other repositories, including the linux kernel itself, with GPL license. What I mean by 'different form' is that the code has undergone many changes, but the mentioned author is the same. See for instance: [in the linux kernel](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/btcoexist/halbtc8192e2ant.c?h=v6.1-rc3&id=f1d2b4d338bf090296f67830025228872fd52513) - there are 3 header files without author or license information - one is a trivial file `./include/rtw_version.h` - the second one is `./hal/btc/halbtc8192e2ant.h` and also exists in the linux kernel in another form (many changes in the code but same base) - the thirst one is `./hal/phydm/phydm_regtable.h` but is a long list of trivial `#define` ### Conclusion Apart from the makefile and some trivial scripts and headers, there are only two files that are not explicitely GPLed : `./hal/btc/halbtc8192e2ant.c` and its corresponding header. The fact that modified versions of these files can be found as GPL-released files tends to reassure me, but still, I have no proof that the exact files we use are GPL. Moreover, I have no license information at all about the makefile. If we say that this is a problem, could we put the package in the `nonfree` repository, with a license field like `license="GPL-2.0-only, custom:unknown"`?