Libiberty license roundup (questions/potential problems)

Nathanael Nerode neroden@twcny.rr.com
Fri May 23 22:59:00 GMT 2003


Looking at libiberty, it seems to be under a mass of different licences.

There are several problems here.  The first are the (non-autogenerated) files
with no explicit copyright notice or licence.  I would assume that they were
under the terms of the "rest of libiberty", except that it's not clear
what that is.

The second are the two files with copyright and no license listed.

The third are the BSD files with no explicit modification permission.

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 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?

* Verbatim only
  COPYING.LIB (copy of LGPL 2.1)
  copying-lib.texi (copy of LGPL 2.1)

* GNU FDL 1.2 or later (with TeX permission)
  libiberty.texi

* No license or copyright on individual file
  ChangeLog
  README
  aclocal.m4
  bcopy.c
  config.in (autogenerated)
  config.table
  configure.in
  copysign.c
  ffs.c
  fnmatch.txh
  functions.texi (autogenerated)
  getpagesize.c
  getpwd.c
  makefile.vms
  memchr.c
  mpw-make.sed (probably obsolete?)
  obstacks.texi
  pexecute.txh
  strdup.c
  tmpnam.c
  vmsbuild.com
  vprintf.c
  waitpid.c

* No license, FSF copyright
  vfprintf.c

* No license, University of California copyright
  xatexit.c

* LGPL 2 or later
  (as part of "libiberty library")
  Makefile.in
  argv.c
  asprintf.c
  choose-temp.c
  concat.c
  fdmatch.c
  gather-docs
  getruntime.c
  hashtab.c
  hex.c 
  lbasename.c
  maint-tool
  make-temp-file.c
  mempcpy.c
  mpw.c
  pex-common.h
  pex-djgpp.c
  pex-mpw.c
  pex-msdos.c
  pex-os2.c
  pex-unix.c
  pex-win32.c
  safe-ctype.c
  spaces.c
  stpncpy.c
  vasprintf.c
  xexit.c
  xmalloc.c

  (as part of the "GNU C Library")
  regex.c

  (Boilerplate is for "GNU C Library is free software...", but up top says
  "based on ... in the GNU C Library", not "This file is part of...",
  so a little confused.)
  mkstemps.c
  putenv.c
  setenv.c

* GPL 2 or later 
  (as "this program")
  _doprnt.c
  fnmatch.c
  getopt.c
  getopt1.c
  md5.c
  objalloc.c
  obstack.c
  physmem.c
  ternary.c

  (as part of "GNU CC")
  fibheap.c
  partition.c
  sort.c
  splay-tree.c

  (as part of GDB)
  floatformat.c

  (as part of "libiberty library")
  lrealpath.c

  (as part of "libiberty library", but confused.  Says "You should have
  received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU CC"...)
  strtod.c

  (This one's messed up.  It says "This file is part of libiberty.
  GCC is free software...")
  make-relative-prefix.c

* GPL 2 or later, with special linking exception
  (as part of "libiberty library")
  clock.c
  snprintf.c
  vsnprintf.c
  vsprintf.c

  (as part of "GNU CC")
  cp-demangle.c
  dyn-string.c

* LGPL 2 or later, with special linking exception (!)
  (as part of "libiberty library")
  cplus-dem.c

* public domain
  alloca.c
  atexit.c
  basename.c
  bcmp.c
  bzero.c
  calloc.c
  getcwd.c
  insque.c
  memcmp.c
  memcpy.c
  memmove.c
  memset.c
  rename.c
  sigsetmask.c
  strchr.c
  strerror.c
  strncmp.c
  strrchr.c
  strsignal.c
  strstr.c
  vfork.c
  xmemdup.c
  xstrdup.c
  xstrerror.c

* BSD (U of C)
  (usual long version of BSD license)
  bsearch.c
  random.c
  strtol.c
  strtoul.c

  (unusual, shorter version of the license, missing the "with
    or without modification" clause)
  strcasecmp.c  
  strncasecmp.c



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