Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 3/4] slirp: remove reference to COPYRIGHT file

[Eric Blake]

On 3/13/19 1:07 PM, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 6:57 PM Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> On 3/13/19 11:42 AM, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>>> The slirp COPYRIGHT file is a BSD-3 license.
>>
>> Is it? I only see 2 clauses listed there.
> 
> In commit 2f5f89963186d42a7ded253bc6cf5b32abb45cec ("Remove the
> advertising clause from the slirp license"). the 4th BSD clause was
> removed.
> 
> Daniel Gasparovski & Kelly Price gave permission to license slirp
> under 3-clause BSD.
> 
> So I think we should instead put back the 3rd clause in COPYRIGHT file.
> 
> What do you think?


Checking the history, slirp/COPYRIGHT's initial version in 2004 (commit
5fafdf24) listed only 3 clauses BUT used the poisonous advertising
clause for clause 3 which is the controversial clause of non-free
4-clause (that is, it appears that the BSD-4 license was copied, and
then the WRONG clause was deleted, when creating COPYRIGHT.  Perhaps
explained as an easy mistake to make since 3-clause was created by
removing clause 3 of the 4-clause, where you sometimes see the
three-clause version with clauses 1, 2, 4; but more commonly see a
renumbered version with clauses 1, 2, 3 to close the gap. If you pay
attention only to clause numbers instead of content, it can be easy to
confuse which clause to delete to go from 4-clause to 3-clause).  Commit
2f5f89963 removed the poisonous wrong clause on the grounds of moving
from 4-clause to 3-clause; but did not add the missing clause, which
makes it LOOK like the 2-clause version.  But I think we have a decent
enough trail showing the intent for 3-clause.  Therefore:

Yes, a pre-requisite patch that changes COPYRIGHT to use full 3-clause
wording, with full reference back to Danny's explicit mention of "I have
no objection to having Slirp code in QEMU be licensed under the 3-clause
BSD license.", seems warranted.  Feel free to copy any of my wording
into your commit message.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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