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Re: Libiberty license roundup (questions/potential problems)
- From: DJ Delorie <dj at redhat dot com>
- To: neroden at twcny dot rr dot com
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, gdb at sources dot redhat dot com, binutils at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 19:06:11 -0400
- Subject: Re: Libiberty license roundup (questions/potential problems)
- References: <20030523225905.GA30461@doctormoo>
> Looking at libiberty, it seems to be under a mass of different
> licences.
Yup. It will probably stay that way, too, because changing copyright
terms is *very* difficult.
> The fourth are the various files which aren't sure what they're part
> of; I'd like permission to just fix those all to claim to be part of
> libiberty, unless there's some reason not to.
The reason is, only the original author can change the copyright terms.
> The fifth is the question of why some are LGPL, some are GPL, some
> are GPL with linking exception, and one is LGPL with linking
> exception. Effectively the library as a whole is under GPL in
> general, it would seem; what purpose do the other licenses serve?
Some have the exception because they're used in libstdc++, for
example. There is no "library as a whole" as far as libiberty is
concerned; each source file has its own license, and that's pretty
much the end of the story, since there's little we can do about it.