Re: [PATCH] compat: add a getpass() compatibility function

[Erik Faye-Lund <kusmabite@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik Faye-Lund wrote:
>> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 1:37 PM, Rafael Gieschke <rafael@gieschke.de> wrote:
>
>>> + * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>>> + *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>>> + *    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
>>
>> How do we plan to adhere to this clause? I guess all
>> package-maintainers could explicitly add this to their release notes /
>> documentation, but they will have to know that they should. I don't
>> think every package maintainer read every patch in-depth enough to
>> notice this.
>
> The vcs-svn/ directory is also under a two-clause BSD-style license
> for what it's worth.  To give a vague summary of requirements from
> different parts of the code base[1]:
>
>  . COPYING requires a copy of the GPLv2 to be distributed along with
>   the binaries and for the corresponding source code to be accessible
>   from the same place (or a written offer under some circumstances,
>   etc)
>
>  . xdiff's license requires a copy of the LGPL (version 2.1 or later)
>   to be distributed along with the binaries, unless your copy of the
>   license notice is altered to refer to the GPL.  Likewise for
>   compat/fnmatch, compat/regex, and compat/strtok_r.c.
>
>  . vcs-svn/LICENSE the license to be distributed along with any
>   binaries.  Likewise for compat/inet_ntop.c, compat/inet_pton.c,
>   compat/nedmalloc/*, and contrib/fast-import/git-p4.
>
> Maybe we should provide a file NOTICES with all the required notices?
> I admit I'm happier sticking to the line "Please grep for
> '[Cc]opyright' for detailed distribution terms.  If you ship the
> corresponding source code with your binaries, you're probably in the
> clear."

Having a file like NOTICES that contains all explicit copyright
notices required sounds like it will help package maintainers. But it
can also make them lazy and blindly copy the file, which can lead them
in (probably very minor) legal problems if we forget to update it.

This was the first instance I noticed that explicitly require a
copyright notice other than GPL (except for LGPL, which I for some
reason just assumed was covered by the GPL text), which is the reason
why I mentioned it. Examining every single source code before every
single release seems a bit kludgey, but perhaps it's the best thing to
do.

> I suppose based on a strict reading we ought to have a copy
> of the LPGL 2.1 in the source tree, though...  Maybe something like
> this can help.
>
> -- >8 --
> Subject: provide a copy of the LGPLv2.1
>

I'm a bit baffled that this is required for a GPL-program. But since
it apparently is, I think this makes sense.