Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] B2 for Gitlab?

[Mike Gerwitz]

On Sun, May 01, 2016 at 10:56:49 -0700, Aaron Wolf wrote:
> The same lack-of-license could happen with copy/paste of content from
> a file even when the header is included.

But that's a mistake made by someone else.  Failing to include the
license in the source file to begin with is a mistake-by-default.

> It seems the only reasonable view here is to say that files getting
> separated is more likely than copy/paste (though I don't know if
> that's true, I'll accept it seems a good guess), and the extra layer
> of caution is nice.

It's less common of a practice today, but it still happens.  Even if
it's as simple as sharing a file with a friend as an example of some
concept, and that friend then sharing with others---the context may
simply be lost.  If sharing is a priority---which, in free software, it
is---then we should do our best to make it work as well as possible.

Take gnulib for example: it is intended to be used by copying source
files into your project:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/

If I saw some program Foo that did 10% of what I wanted to do for my
program Quux, I wouldn't consider forking all of Foo or somehow
maintaining an external reference to it---I'd use only the code/files that
I'd need.

In [0], the SFLC provide some licensing advice/options; even in the case
of a centralized LICENSE file, the recommendation is still to maintain a
_reference_ to that file---along with a copyright notice---in each
source file, in case it becomes detached from the others.

>> A project might incorporate code from another into a single source file;
>> in this case, the license of the file must clearly state dual licensing,
>> unless they can be relicensed (e.g. Expat -> GPL).
>> 
>
> That's a more interesting point. Of course, a header could be added just
> for those cases. Incidentally, how does one determine which parts of a
> file are under which license?

I don't recall any examples, but I've seen anything from commenting
about specific procedure(s) to delimiting blocks of code with
comments.  I rarely see it, tbh.

See also a (very) brief mention in [0].


[0] : 
https://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2012/ManagingCopyrightInformation.html

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer
https://mikegerwitz.com
FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB

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