Re: [avr-libc-dev] [RFC] Licensing information

[Theodore A. Roth]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004, E. Weddington wrote:

> Hello All!
>
> Ok, it's time to bite the bullet.
>
> The LICENSING and AUTHORS file have not been adequate. People who use
> avr-libc and want to put proper attribution in their docs, don't know
> what to put in because the LICENSING file is confusing. And the AUTHORS
> file was not up-to-date.
>
> Attached are IMO what the LICENSING and AUTHORS file should be.
>
> The AUTHORS file contains the list of project administrators (current)
> and a list of authors: determined by anyone who has a copyright on a
> file in the project. If we wanted to, we could also put in a list of
> *contributors*: anybody who has submitted a patch that has been accepted.
>
> The LICENSING file was completely overhauled. It now contains a true
> copyright *statement*, not just a template. All of the copyright years
> and authors have been combined. There is a note in the file to see the
> individual source files for more information. It is noted that
> *portions* of avr-libc are copyright by <the list of authors>.  I feel
> that this a reasonable compromise that executes the spirit of the
> licensing, and importantly it allows users a means of attribution, which
> I feel is the important premise of this file. And for the record, IANAL.
>
> It is also important to note, that avr-libc has *two licenses* governing
> the source. Most of the math library by Michael Stumpf is actually a GPL
> + exception license. This is now reflected in the LICENSE file. It would
> be nice if this was eventually relicensed to BSD - advertising clause,
> or a substitute could be found that could be licensed as that. Since
> this references the GPL, I think that we should add a file to the
> project, GPL, that contains the GPL license that Michael Stumpf refers to.
>
> Now to the big problem: The original license file said that avr-libc was
> a Modified BSD License (with the No Advertising clause). However the
> "template" that it gave for new authors, only showed the original two
> clauses of the BSD license. It did NOT contain the No Advertising
> clause. Hence there are a lot of new files (for example headers in the
> include/avr directory) that have the 2 clause license. Compare this with
> libc/string/memcpy.S which has the proper 3-clause, no advertising BSD
> license. So, we're going to have to contact a bunch of copyright holders
> and get them to approve a license change. I'm willing to take this on if
> the admins agree. I would imagine that it would be best to make sure to
> CC avr-libc-dev so the author approvals of copyright change are archived
> for posterity.
>
> Note, that I've changed the LICENSE file to show the 3-clause BSD license.
>
> Eric
>

Sounds fine. Can you generate a patch implementing your solution and
post it so we can see exactly what the changes will look like?

---
Ted Roth
PGP Key ID: 0x18F846E9
Jabber ID: address@hidden