License for UCM config files - re plumbers audio conf discussion.

License for UCM config files - re plumbers audio conf discussion.

[Liam Girdwood]

During the plumbers audio conference we discussed changing the release
cadence and packaging of the UCM config files. This was to separate them
from the alsa-lib package and alsa-lib release cadence for easier and
more timely distribution for Ubuntu, Fedora etc.

One thing that we did not cover was the UCM config file licence, if
indeed there is a license for the UCM config files ? It's clear to me
that the alsa-lib source and headers are LGPL, but does the LGPL also
apply to the runtime UCM config files ? LGPL is specifically designed
for libraries so my understanding is that it's probably not applicable
to the UCM runtime configuration files.  

Here the LGPL definition of source code from alsa-lib COPYING :-

  ""Source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it.  For a library, complete source code means
all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated
interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation
and installation of the library."

Having a licence free or BSD/MIT type license for the UCM config repo
would mean the configurations (or derivatives of) could also be used
with Android.

IANAL

Liam

Re: License for UCM config files - re plumbers audio conf discussion.

[Takashi Iwai]

On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 12:01:29 +0100,
Liam Girdwood wrote:
> 
> During the plumbers audio conference we discussed changing the release
> cadence and packaging of the UCM config files. This was to separate them
> from the alsa-lib package and alsa-lib release cadence for easier and
> more timely distribution for Ubuntu, Fedora etc.
> 
> One thing that we did not cover was the UCM config file licence, if
> indeed there is a license for the UCM config files ? It's clear to me
> that the alsa-lib source and headers are LGPL, but does the LGPL also
> apply to the runtime UCM config files ? LGPL is specifically designed
> for libraries so my understanding is that it's probably not applicable
> to the UCM runtime configuration files.  
> 
> Here the LGPL definition of source code from alsa-lib COPYING :-
> 
>   ""Source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work for
> making modifications to it.  For a library, complete source code means
> all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated
> interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation
> and installation of the library."
> 
> Having a licence free or BSD/MIT type license for the UCM config repo
> would mean the configurations (or derivatives of) could also be used
> with Android.
> 
> IANAL
> 
> Liam

IANAL, too, but releasing the collection of configs with a relaxed
license sounds like a good idea to me.


Takashi

Re: License for UCM config files - re plumbers audio conf discussion.

[Mark Brown]

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On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 11:01:29AM +0000, Liam Girdwood wrote:

> One thing that we did not cover was the UCM config file licence, if
> indeed there is a license for the UCM config files ? It's clear to me
> that the alsa-lib source and headers are LGPL, but does the LGPL also
> apply to the runtime UCM config files ? LGPL is specifically designed
> for libraries so my understanding is that it's probably not applicable
> to the UCM runtime configuration files.  

Even if it's not a *sensible* license in the absence of anything else
it's going to apply unless things aren't copyrightable at all (and even
there people might not want to take the risk that someone will argue).
Relicensing under something like three clause BSD does seem to make
sense though.

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