On Tue, Feb 07, 2012 at 12:05:21PM -0500, Bhaskar, K.S wrote:
$ head -n 10 sr_port/alias_funcs.c
/****************************************************************
* *
* Copyright 2009, 2011 Fidelity Information Services, Inc *
* *
* This source code contains the intellectual property *
* of its copyright holder(s), and is made available *
* under a license. If you do not know the terms of *
* the license, please stop and do not read further. *
* *
****************************************************************/
I actually do not know the terms of thet license because I can only
*assume* that the COPYING file (GNU AFFERO) is the relevant licensing
information. I noticed that every file is featuring the text above (in
some of them there is "Sanchez Computer Associates, Inc." instead of
FIS).
This probably should be made more clear at some point, for instance the
COPYING file should state explicitely that all files in the
subdirectories containing the phrase above are affected or some
clarification inside the README file would help as well.
[KSB] It is packaged this way because the same GT.M source code
produces binaries that are released under both free / open source as
well as proprietary licenses (for example, GT.M on AIX is not FOSS).
There is no doubt that you have your reasons for the licensing
information inside the source files.
Also, some source code (e.g., utility programs, plugins and shell
scripts) is included in the binary packages. When we first released
GT.M under a FOSS license, we were advised by counsel to use a
header like this on source files and to put the license in the
COPYING file.
This advise is also perfectly fine.
The COPYING file is AGPL v3 verbatim.
As far as I understand things there is no written rule that it should
not be possible to add an additional paragraph to this file that
clarifies to which files this text applies and IMHO in the current case
this should be done.
For instance something like
The following license statement applies to all files in the
subdirectories specifically those who are featuring the following
copyright notice:
<insert your default notice inside code here>
Otherwise at least from my perspective an unwilling reader could assume
that the comment in the code is not connected to the COPYING file
because it is not statet explicitely. To simplify things for ftpmaster
it is better to make this evident from the beginning.
We can
certainly include a readme either as part of the upstream package or
as part of the Debian package.
It needs to be part of the upstream package to convince ftpmaster
(and it is helpful for non-Debian users as well).