Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] compiler: Drop 'public domain' header from file

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 01:37:18PM +0000, Felipe Franciosi wrote:
> 
> > On 23 Sep 2016, at 14:24, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > On 23 September 2016 at 13:51, Felipe Franciosi <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> As discussed on the list [1], having a comment stating that this file
> >> is "public domain" is arguably wrong and not legally binding. By
> >> removing this statement from the header, the file is under the
> >> project-wide GPLv2+ license.
> >> 
> >> [1] http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2016-09/msg06151.html
> >> 
> >> Signed-off-by: Felipe Franciosi <address@hidden>
> >> ---
> >> include/qemu/compiler.h | 2 --
> >> 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)
> >> 
> >> diff --git a/include/qemu/compiler.h b/include/qemu/compiler.h
> >> index 338d3a6..9d6d09b 100644
> >> --- a/include/qemu/compiler.h
> >> +++ b/include/qemu/compiler.h
> >> @@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
> >> -/* public domain */
> >> -
> >> #ifndef COMPILER_H
> >> #define COMPILER_H
> > 
> > Can we have a comment specifically saying what license it is under,
> > please? Something like
> > 
> > /* compiler.h: macros to abstract away compiler specifics
> > *
> > * This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.
> > * See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
> > */
> 
> I'm not against that, but the consensus seems to be that what's currently in 
> LICENSE is clear enough:
> http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=blob_plain;f=LICENSE;hb=HEAD
> 
> 2) ... Source files with no licensing information
> are released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your
> option) any later version.

That is just a catch all to deal with bad source files. Best practice
is to always have an explicit header in every single file, otherwise
when someone copies a file from your project into another project,
the implicit license info gets lost.

Regards,
Daniel
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