Re: A meager copyright. Remotely acceptable?
"Jesús M. Navarro" <jesus.navarro@undominio.net> writes:
> The COPYING file obviously states the intention for a BSD-like license.
> On the other hand, GPL on the RPM-build files is not incompatible with
> that but that leaves the question about all the other source files. As
> long as the author of the COPYING file retains copyright for the whole
> lot (i.e. has not copied anything from other sources), I think the best
> path would be approach the upstream maintainer and ask him to clarify
> the situation of the other copyrigth files. You can even go for the
> extra mile, once the author's position is made clear to offer to patch
> yourself the files (after all, the only thing it would be needed is
> adding a boilerplate header to all of them).
> Without this (IMHO) standard copyright laws are in effect which means
> you can't even touch the non-stated files with a ten foot pole.
A lot of upstream authors think that repeating a boilerplate header in
every file clutters their code and are uninterested in adding it, and are
going to look at you in askance if you try to convince them that adding a
clear license file to the source isn't sufficient to state the license for
the entire source. And in practice, I suspect they're right.
I'm one of those people who finds constantly repeating the license in
every source file to be obnoxious, but to satisfy the desires of people
who seem to feel that's necessary, I add a one-line statement pointing to
the LICENSE file in every source file instead.
To respond to the original poster, I think that distribution is clearly
covered by the license and copyright in the COPYING file and wouldn't give
it a second thought, although of course double-checking with upstream
can't hurt I suppose.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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