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License audit on dpkg source tree



Hi!

This is something that has been bothering me for a long time, so the
other day I sat down and did a full license audit of the sources.

I've cleaned up the license headers and added missing ones, as a side
effect “licensecheck -r dpkg” works better now. There's still lots of
copyright statements missing, I have a patch around to add few, but
every file takes time digging, and there's probably more urgent things
to tend to. I'd like to get all GPL code unified as GPL-2+,
eventually, though.

The remaining issues, which might need asking people around are:

* scripts/Dpkg/Vendor/Ubuntu.pm:

  Copyright © 2008 Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com>

  This might actually be © Canonical Ltd.?

* dselect/methods/multicd/*: GPL-2 only

  The dselect-multicd method from the dpkg-multicd package, states on
  its debian/copyright to be based on builtin methods from dselect,
  but then has a license of GPL-2 only, while dselect has GPL-2+.

* dselect/methods/Debian/Dselect/Ftp.pm: No header
  dselect/methods/ftp/*: GPL (no version)

  The dselect-ftp method from the dpkg-ftp package, states on its
  debian/copyright file to be under the GPL-2 only. Ideally this
  would have the same terms as the rest of the code base, in case
  code needs to be reused for example.

* lib/dpkg/utils.c: GPL-2 only

  This file started as GPL-2 only with commit a4f9322a6417e1683183ea
  by Wichert Akkerman, which only included cisdigit() and cisalpha().

  Ian Jackson added a new cisspace() function in commit c91dc9f, and
  refactored the fgets_checked() and fgets_must() functions from
  src/filesdb.c (GPL-2+) in commit b95907e. I'm pretty certian he
  just didn't notice that license header, but to be sure he'd need to
  be asked for confirmation,

  The rest of the changes are trivial.

  The cis* functions are not a problem, I had reaimplemented them
  from scratch some time ago for peformance reasons. And thus will be
  dropped after that commit happens.

* lib/dpkg/showpkg.c: GPL-2 only

  Used to be GPL-2+ with all commits © by Wichert Akkerman, until
  commit 6e1eb71ebffbbaca2e4bc when it changed to GPL-2 only.

  Changes afterwards by:

  Wichert Akkerman (d5e656d: trivial, removal of an include).
  Adam Heath (dbcb744: trivial, reorder an include;
              a1d9dc4: trivial, adding a 'void' and macroifying the
              unused dumpchain to avoid a warning, but I've just removed
              it instead, so it becomes trivial regardless).
  Frank Lichtenheld
  Pierre Habouzit (8ad47fe: trivial, adding a 'z' to a format string).
  Guillem Jover

  So I guess getting permission from Frank and myself and reverting
  6e1eb71ebffbbaca2e4bc should be fine, here?

regards,
guillem


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