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

[Markus Armbruster]

Daniel P. Berrangé <address@hidden> writes:

> 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:"

No.  LGPL permits derived works to be licensed under GPL.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

Keeping the separate historical boiler-plate may feel polite.  But to
figure out what exactly is LGPLed, you'd have to dig through history
anyway.  So all it accomplishes is providing a hint that somewhere in
history something could possibly be found that's still LGPLed and still
useful.

> 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."