On Oct 14, Joel Baker wrote: > Er. Given that 'libc' is under the 4-clause license, if this is true... or > does that not apply to 'system' libraries? NetBSD certainly has a fair bit > of GPLed code, including dist/gnu in the source tree.
Hmm. This could get ugly quickly; my gut feeling is that since NetBSD uses GPLed code linked against its libc, it's OK by the FSF. But it does set a bad precedent with us using the "system libraries" exemption as a magic wand to get rid of GPL incompatibilities - Debian hasn't done that in the past. One thing to bear in mind is that the four-clause license is reduced to the three-clause license if the code is (C) UCB (they did that by fiat a few years back). But IIRC all of the *BSDs had a lot of random hackers and companies decide they wanted their names mentioned too, and a lot of them haven't revoked the ad clause from their licenses. > Still, as long as it's DFSG-free... what are the practical implications > of using it as a core? Do we have to provide an advertising clause in our > releases, et al, as NetBSD appears to? > > I can work on trying to untangle the strands of which license applies to > what part of the NetBSD source tree, but I need to know what I should do > about the copyright file and whether anyone else needs to be aware... Well, you definitely need to preserve the copyright file etc; if it's a massive boilerplate with all the contributors' names, I'd put it in the kernel package in /usr/share/common-licenses/NetBSD so debian/copyright in other packages can refer to it. The bottom line, though, is that -legal is going to have to figure this out. You may have to comb every file in the source tree to figure out what license applies to what :-(. (Practically Debian/FreeBSD may be in a better position here since they're using GNU libc, which will avoid some of these issues. But they still have to worry about attribution requirements, etc.) Chris -- Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ Computer Systems Manager, Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Mississippi 125B Lewis Hall - 662-915-5765
