Re: [PATCH] Remove ambiguities in the COPYING file; add CONTRIBUTING file

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@citrix.com>]

On 11/08/2016 10:49, "George Dunlap" <george.dunlap@citrix.com> wrote:

>On 11/08/16 01:51, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Aug 2016, Lars Kurth wrote:
>>> COPYING file:
>>> The motivation of this change is to make it easier for new
>>> contributors to conduct a license and patent review, WITHOUT
>>> changing any licenses.
>>> - Remove references to BSD-style licenses as we have more
>>>   common license exceptions and replace with "other license
>>>   stanzas"
>>> - List the most common situations under which code is licensed
>>>   under licenses other than GPLv2 (section "Licensing Exceptions")
>>> - List the most common non-GPLv2 licenses that are in use in
>>>   this repository based on a recent FOSSology scan (section
>>>   "Licensing Exceptions")
>>> - List other license related conventions within the project
>>>   to make it easier to conduct a license review.
>>> - Clarify the incoming license as its omission has confused
>>>   past contributors (section "Contributions")
>>>
>>> CONTRIBUTION file:
>>> The motivation of this file is to make it easier for contributors
>>> to find contribution related resources. Add information on existing
>>> license related conventions to avoid unintentional future licensing
>>> issues. Provide templates for copyright headers for the most commonly
>>> used licenses in this repository.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@citrix.com>
>>> ---
>>>  CONTRIBUTING | 210
>>>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>  COPYING      |  64 ++++++++++++++----
>>>  2 files changed, 260 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
>>>  create mode 100644 CONTRIBUTING
>>>
>>> diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING b/CONTRIBUTING
>>> new file mode 100644
>>> index 0000000..7af13c4
>>> --- /dev/null
>>> +++ b/CONTRIBUTING
>>> @@ -0,0 +1,210 @@
>>> +
>>> +CONTRIBUTING
>>> +============
>>> +
>>> +INBOUND LICENSE
>>> +---------------
>>> +
>>> +Contributions are governed by the license that applies to relevant
>>> +specific file or by the license specified in the COPYING file, that
>>              ^files
>
>I think "file" is better here, as the license is on a file-by-file
>basis, not on a whole contribution basis.

Agreed: licenses are per file. For files which don't have a license header
(of which we have many), the license is governed by the COPYING file.

> That is, if your contribution
>changes a BSD file and a GPLv2 file in a single series (or a single
>patch), then the changes to the BSD file are goverened by the BSD
>licence, and the changes to the GPLv2 file are governed by the GPLv2.

Correct.

>> 
>> 
>>> +governs the license of its containing directory and its
>>>subdirectories.
>>> +
>>> +Most of the Xen Project code is licensed under GPLv2, but a number of
>>> +directories are primarily licensed under different licenses.
>>                     ^ I would remove "primarily" from this sentence
>
>"primarily licensed under different licenses" implies to me that most of
>the files in the directory are under a different license, but some may
>be licensed GPLv2.  Without the "primarily" I would take that to imply
>that *none* of the files are licensed GPLv2.

George is correct: I used "primarily" because there are hardly any
directories 
which are truly one license only. Almost all contain a mixture of
licenses. 
The only notable exception is xen/include/public, which is all MIT.

>If there is at least one directory that has mostly non-GPLv2 files but
>at least one GPLv2 file, or we anticipate that such directories might
>exist in the future, I would leave the "primarily" in.  If there aren't
>any now and we don't expect any in the future, then yes it's unnecessary
>and should probably be removed.

There are loads: for example xen/include/acpi

Lars

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