Another reason not to rely on just the high-level copyright and license info
is that it may not be accurate:
roboq6, for example, points to "Copyright © 2006 University of Washington"
and "Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0" but I can point to two
things that show this information doesn't provide an accurate picture of the
copyright holder and the license:
1. alpine-2.00/pico/msmem.c says it's copyrighted by Stephen Chung, *not* the
University of Washington.
2. It uses a different license (not the Apache license) that says:
"Theoretically, you are required to obtain special approval from me (because
I copyrighted these routines) if you want to use them in your programs.
However, I usually don't really care if you are not using these routines in a
commercial, shareware etc. product."
So, seeing that copyright statement & license notice that roboq6 quoted
doesn't give you the complete picture of all of the copyright holders and
licenses in effect for the program. You need to review everything to get a
complete picture. There are programs to help with this kind of analysis.
So, in the end, it wasn't a binary blob as Cyberhawk thought but source code
with a different license.
What Stephen Chung said is problematic because:
1. He indicated permission wasn't needed was long as it wasn't used
commercially. According to the FSF's free software definition, "a free
program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and
commercial distribution."
2. He refers to obtaining special approval to do that. In the FSF's free
software definition, "being free to do these things means (among other
things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so."
