picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Frederik Van Slycken]

Dear Antony,

I applaud that you're working on incorporating picoTCP into barebox -
I work for the company that developed picoTCP, and so I am naturally
enthusiastic about this. However, one small thing that should be taken
into account, concerning licensing.

According to the wiki, barebox is licensed under "gplv2 or later",
while picoTCP is licensed only under gplv2. I Am Not A Lawyer, but I
think this means that, if your work would at some point make it into
the master branch of barebox, the licensing notes may need to be
changed to something like "either version 2 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version (except for the picoTCP part, which is
version 2 only)."

Another option would be for barebox to drop the "or later"-part...
although some people here may feel strongly about keeping it in.
(Let's just hope I didn't ignite a gplv2/v3 flame war by suggesting
this!)

Maybe there are other options - what are your thoughts on this issue?



Keep up the good work!

Best Regards,
Frederik Van Slycken

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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Robert Schwebel]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2014 at 09:24:51PM +0200, Frederik Van Slycken wrote:
> I applaud that you're working on incorporating picoTCP into barebox -
> I work for the company that developed picoTCP, and so I am naturally
> enthusiastic about this. However, one small thing that should be taken
> into account, concerning licensing.
> 
> According to the wiki, barebox is licensed under "gplv2 or later",

Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
file says v2, which is also our intention.

> while picoTCP is licensed only under gplv2. I Am Not A Lawyer, but I
> think this means that, if your work would at some point make it into
> the master branch of barebox, the licensing notes may need to be
> changed to something like "either version 2 of the License, or (at
> your option) any later version (except for the picoTCP part, which is
> version 2 only)."

We do not intend to to to anything else than v2.

rsc
-- 
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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Frederik Van Slycken]

2014-06-05 21:30 GMT+02:00 Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>:
> Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
> file says v2, which is also our intention.

http://wiki.barebox.org/doku.php#license

"""
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
the License, or (at your option) any later version.
"""

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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Frederik Van Slycken]

2014-06-05 21:36 GMT+02:00 Frederik Van Slycken
<frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com>:
> 2014-06-05 21:30 GMT+02:00 Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>:
>> Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
>> file says v2, which is also our intention.
>
> http://wiki.barebox.org/doku.php#license
>
> """
> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
> published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
> the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> """

A couple of other locations - I'm not sure if they're all up to date,
but these are results 3 and 4 when I do a google search for "barebox
license" :
http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2011.05.0/
http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2009.12.0/main.html

Number 2 was the wiki, already mentioned, and number 1 is wikipedia,
which does mention only gplv2 :)

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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Antony Pavlov]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2014 21:48:10 +0200
Frederik Van Slycken <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2014-06-05 21:36 GMT+02:00 Frederik Van Slycken
> <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com>:
> > 2014-06-05 21:30 GMT+02:00 Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>:
> >> Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
> >> file says v2, which is also our intention.
> >
> > http://wiki.barebox.org/doku.php#license
> >
> > """
> > This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> > modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
> > published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
> > the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> > """
> 
> A couple of other locations - I'm not sure if they're all up to date,
> but these are results 3 and 4 when I do a google search for "barebox
> license" :
> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2011.05.0/
> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2009.12.0/main.html
> 
> Number 2 was the wiki, already mentioned, and number 1 is wikipedia,
> which does mention only gplv2 :)

I think Sascha can clarify this question.

AFAIR barebox itself is gplv2-only software, but we can add gplv2-or-later components into it.

-- 
Best regards,
  Antony Pavlov

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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Antony Pavlov]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2014 21:48:10 +0200
Frederik Van Slycken <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2014-06-05 21:36 GMT+02:00 Frederik Van Slycken
> <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com>:
> > 2014-06-05 21:30 GMT+02:00 Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>:
> >> Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
> >> file says v2, which is also our intention.
> >
> > http://wiki.barebox.org/doku.php#license
> >
> > """
> > This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> > modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
> > published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
> > the License, or (at your option) any later version.
> > """
> 
> A couple of other locations - I'm not sure if they're all up to date,
> but these are results 3 and 4 when I do a google search for "barebox
> license" :
> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2011.05.0/
> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2009.12.0/main.html
> 
> Number 2 was the wiki, already mentioned, and number 1 is wikipedia,
> which does mention only gplv2 :)

There is no need to use google to determine barebox license!

Just see COPYING file in the top dir of barebox repo:
  http://git.pengutronix.de/?p=barebox.git;a=blob;f=COPYING;h=f13e904b5362b7f2e0bdfa9db74ed14b1dcfdfe7;hb=HEAD

it is GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991!

-- 
Best regards,
  Antony Pavlov

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Re: picoTCP, barebox, and licenses

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On Jun 6, 2014, at 3:37 PM, Antony Pavlov <antonynpavlov@gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 5 Jun 2014 21:48:10 +0200
> Frederik Van Slycken <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 2014-06-05 21:36 GMT+02:00 Frederik Van Slycken
>> <frederik.van.slycken@gmail.com>:
>>> 2014-06-05 21:30 GMT+02:00 Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>:
>>>> Where is that in the wiki? IMHO it isn't correct, the toplevel COPYING
>>>> file says v2, which is also our intention.
>>> 
>>> http://wiki.barebox.org/doku.php#license
>>> 
>>> """
>>> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
>>> modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
>>> published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
>>> the License, or (at your option) any later version.
>>> """
>> 
>> A couple of other locations - I'm not sure if they're all up to date,
>> but these are results 3 and 4 when I do a google search for "barebox
>> license" :
>> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2011.05.0/
>> http://www.barebox.org/documentation/barebox-2009.12.0/main.html
>> 
>> Number 2 was the wiki, already mentioned, and number 1 is wikipedia,
>> which does mention only gplv2 :)
> 
> I think Sascha can clarify this question.
> 
> AFAIR barebox itself is gplv2-only software, but we can add gplv2-or-later components into it.

For a legal point of view we do not care

Barebox is GPLv2 ONLY as it does contain quite a lot of file GPLv2 ONLY

and yes we DO can add GPLv2+ file into it

IIRC we already had this conversation on the ML before with Sascha & I over it and state that Barebox will be GPLv2 Only

It’s a statement for company that invest in Barebox that tomorrow the licence will not evolve
So they can have longterm plan with it (legal point of view)

Best Regards,
J.

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