Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] ui/gtk: Fix the license information

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 05:05:35PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
> The license information in this file is very messy. A short note at
> the beginning says GPL first, but the long boilerplate code then
> talks about "GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.0". First,
> there is no such version of the "GNU Lesser GPL", it only started with
> version 2.1. In version 2.0, it was still called "GNU Library GPL"
> instead. Second, you can easily get the license of this file wrong
> if you only quickly glance at the long boilerplate code.
> 
> Anyway, looking at the text of the LGPL (see COPYING.LIB in the top
> directory), the license clearly states in section "3." that one should
> rather replace the license information with the GPL information in
> such a case of a mixture instead. Thus let's clean up the confusing
> statements and use the proper GPL text only.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <address@hidden>
> ---
>  ui/gtk.c | 20 ++++++++------------
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/ui/gtk.c b/ui/gtk.c
> index 949b143..af7e5b2 100644
> --- a/ui/gtk.c
> +++ b/ui/gtk.c
> @@ -6,9 +6,6 @@
>   * Authors:
>   *  Anthony Liguori   <address@hidden>
>   *
> - * This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.
> - * See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.

This part of the header was describing the license of the QEMU originated
code for gtk.c

> - *
>   * Portions from gtk-vnc:
>   *
>   * GTK VNC Widget
> @@ -16,19 +13,18 @@
>   * Copyright (C) 2006  Anthony Liguori <address@hidden>
>   * Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden>
>   *
> - * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> - * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
> - * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
> - * version 2.0 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
> + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
> + * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
> + * (at your option) any later version.
>   *
> - * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
> + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>   * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>   * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
> - * Lesser General Public License for more details.
> + * General Public License for more details.
>   *
> - * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
> - * License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
> - * Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301 
> USA
> + * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
> + * along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

while this part of the header was describing the license of the original
GTK-VNC code that was copied into this file.

Changing this text is not correct, because now it no longer describes
the original gtk-vnc license.

If you want to change this file you'll need the main license text for
QEMU further up, *before* the line starting "Portions from gtk-vnc:"

The bit about GTK-VNC could reasonably be simplified to

    "Portions taken from gtk-vnc under the terms of the GNU
     Lesser General Public License 2.1 or later."


Regards,
Daniel
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