Hello folks, As I wrote in this [1] thread I have some questions concerning possible licensing issues, which arose while determining the FSDG compatibility of Inferno [2], which I am trying to package for GNU Guix [3].
The NOTICE [4] in the root of Inferno’s source tree [5] claims that while “different portions” of the code are “subject to different licence terms” the GPLv2+ “governs the collection” and that the other licenses “are all compatible with the GPLv2”. Unfortunately some portions of the code are subject to the ‘Lucent Public License 1.02’ (LPL), which is incompatible with the GPL according to this [6] list. This obviously contradicts the compatibility claim in NOTICE and, since LPL code (‘libmp’ and ‘libsec’) is combined with GPL code when building ‘emu’ (i.e ‘hosted Inferno’), it looks like it could be a GPL violation. There is some more LPL code in the ‘os’ directory, which is not used for building ‘emu’, and in the ‘appl’ and ‘module’ directories, which contain Limbo code, which is run on Inferno but not used to build it. I have considered suggesting that the compatibility claim be removed and an exception [7] be added in a bug report to upstream. But since I am a random person who stumbled across some FAQ on the internet I want to make sure that I have analysed the situation correctly and that my “solution” is adequate before I do that. Does the described situation really constitute a GPL violation (or are the authors allowed to do this, as they are the copyright holders of all the code)? Would the aforementioned “solution” fix this? Is it still possible to provide the “collection” under the GPLv2+? Can Inferno be added to a FSDG distro in its current state or do the licensing issues have to be resolved before this can be considered? Greetings Diego [1]: https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2018-11/msg00000.html [2]: http://inferno-os.org [3]: https://gnu.org/software/guix [4]:
NOTICE
Description: NOTICE
[5]: https://bitbucket.org/inferno-os/inferno-os/src [6]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102 [7]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
