[Buildroot] [PATCH v2 3/5] COPYING: add exception about patch licensing

[Luca Ceresoli]

Arnout, All,

On 10/02/2016 23:35, Arnout Vandecappelle wrote:
> On 04-02-16 00:02, Yann E. MORIN wrote:
>> Luca, All,
>>
>> On 2016-02-01 23:19 +0100, Luca Ceresoli spake thusly:
>>>> Several people have been asking what is the license of the patches
>>>> provided by Buildroot. COPYING is the authoritative place to state it.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Luca Ceresoli <luca at lucaceresoli.net>
>>>> Cc: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com>
>>>> Cc: Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be>
>>>> ---
>>>> Changes v1 -> v2:
>>>>  - Rewrite it almost entirely (Arnout, Thomas).
>>>> ---
>>>>  COPYING | 8 ++++++++
>>>>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
>>>>
>>>> diff --git a/COPYING b/COPYING
>>>> index d511905..3596777 100644
>>>> --- a/COPYING
>>>> +++ b/COPYING
>>>> @@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
>>>> +Except for the patches provided for packages, Buildroot is licensed
>>>> +under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
>> There a gotcha here. The manual states, in chapter 12.3:
>>
>>     Buildroot [is] released under the GNU General Public License,
>>     version 2 or (at your option) any later version.
>>
>> So, we have to clarify: is it GPLv2 or GPLV2+ ?
>>
>> It's too late today for me to go digging; I'll do that tomorrow. Just
>> rmind me before the end of the week if there's not feedback from my part
>> on this topic.
> 
>  Reminder :-)
> 
>  But I did the digging. The situation is of course complicated.
> 
>  We don't have many files that specify a license by themselves. All of them
> specify 'or later', except for makedevs.c (obviously, because it is copied from
> busybox), toolchain-wrapper.c (added by Peter in 2011), and the manual itself,
> which specify v2 only.
> 
>  The top-level Makefile is the only thing of which you could say that it has
> project-wide scope. And that says 'or later'.
> 
>  So, what does that mean for buildroot as a whole? I think it is GPLv2+, except
> for the package patches and except for the files that explicitly specify a
> different license. Can we fit that in the formulation that evolved in this thread?

Here's what I've been able to come up with so far. It's basically:
- the sum of the present thread, plus
- a reduced and modified version of the preamble suggested in the
  GNU GPL itself (section "How to Apply These Terms to Your New
  Programs"), plus
- the statement that BR is GPLv2+ except where differently stated,
  as Arnout suggested.

I'm sure this needs further discussion and improvements.

-------------------------8<----------------------

With the exceptions below, Buildroot is	distributed under the terms of
the GNU General Public License, reproduced below; either version 2 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Some files in Buildroot contain a different license statement. Those
files are licensed under the license contained in the file itself.

Buildroot also bundles patch files, which are applied to the sources
of the various packages. Those patches are not covered by the license
of Buildroot. Instead, they are covered by the license of the software
to which the patches are applied. When said software is available
under multiple licenses, the Buildroot patches are only provided under
the publicly accessible licenses.

-------------------------8<----------------------

-- 
Luca