Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

[Richard Fontana]

Hi,

The README file in the audit userspace package says:

  LICENSE
  =======
  The audit daemon is released as GPL'd code. The
  audit daemon's libraries libaudit.* and libauparse.* are released
  under LGPL so that it may be linked with 3rd party software.

However don't these libraries contain code from this file
https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/strsplit.c
which states its license is GPLv2+?

Richard

Re: Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

[Steve Grubb]

On Saturday, March 18, 2017 11:32:14 PM EDT Richard Fontana wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The README file in the audit userspace package says:
> 
>   LICENSE
>   =======
>   The audit daemon is released as GPL'd code. The
>   audit daemon's libraries libaudit.* and libauparse.* are released
>   under LGPL so that it may be linked with 3rd party software.
> 
> However don't these libraries contain code from this file
> https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/strsplit.c
> which states its license is GPLv2+?

Yes, that looks like a copy and paste mistake. Thanks for pointing that out. 
Anything in:

https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/
https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/auparse/
https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/bindings/

is intended to LGPL. Would replacing the comment at the beginning of the file 
be sufficient to fix this issue?

Thanks,
-Steve

Re: Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

[Richard Fontana]

On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 01:54:52PM -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Saturday, March 18, 2017 11:32:14 PM EDT Richard Fontana wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > The README file in the audit userspace package says:
> > 
> >   LICENSE
> >   =======
> >   The audit daemon is released as GPL'd code. The
> >   audit daemon's libraries libaudit.* and libauparse.* are released
> >   under LGPL so that it may be linked with 3rd party software.
> > 
> > However don't these libraries contain code from this file
> > https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/strsplit.c
> > which states its license is GPLv2+?
> 
> Yes, that looks like a copy and paste mistake. Thanks for pointing that out. 
> Anything in:
> 
> https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/
> https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/auparse/
> https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/bindings/
> 
> is intended to LGPL. Would replacing the comment at the beginning of the file 
> be sufficient to fix this issue?

It may depend on the history of the file. If you were the only person
who contributed to it, yes. But if anyone else contributed to it, and
let's say the contributions were not copyrighted by Red Hat, and the
contributions were sufficiently nontrivial, then maybe we'd have to
get permission from such other contributors to change the indicated
license of the file.

Richard

Re: Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

[Steve Grubb]

On Sunday, March 19, 2017 11:13:04 PM EDT Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 01:54:52PM -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> > On Saturday, March 18, 2017 11:32:14 PM EDT Richard Fontana wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > The README file in the audit userspace package says:
> > >   LICENSE
> > >   =======
> > >   The audit daemon is released as GPL'd code. The
> > >   audit daemon's libraries libaudit.* and libauparse.* are released
> > >   under LGPL so that it may be linked with 3rd party software.
> > > 
> > > However don't these libraries contain code from this file
> > > https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/strsplit.
> > > c
> > > which states its license is GPLv2+?
> > 
> > Yes, that looks like a copy and paste mistake. Thanks for pointing that
> > out. Anything in:
> > 
> > https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/lib/
> > https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/auparse/
> > https://github.com/linux-audit/audit-userspace/blob/master/bindings/
> > 
> > is intended to LGPL. Would replacing the comment at the beginning of the
> > file be sufficient to fix this issue?
> 
> It may depend on the history of the file. If you were the only person
> who contributed to it, yes. But if anyone else contributed to it, and
> let's say the contributions were not copyrighted by Red Hat, and the
> contributions were sufficiently nontrivial, then maybe we'd have to
> get permission from such other contributors to change the indicated
> license of the file.

OK. Good to know. I am the sole contributor to that file. I also checked and 
fixed some new files in auparse/ to which I am also the sole contributor at the 
same time. Everything is good in git and the next release should take care of 
this issue.

Thanks for noticing this.

-Steve

Re: Licensing of libaudit and libauparse

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 11:48:07AM -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> > > 
> > > is intended to LGPL. Would replacing the comment at the beginning of the
> > > file be sufficient to fix this issue?
> > 
> > It may depend on the history of the file. If you were the only person
> > who contributed to it, yes. But if anyone else contributed to it, and
> > let's say the contributions were not copyrighted by Red Hat, and the
> > contributions were sufficiently nontrivial, then maybe we'd have to
> > get permission from such other contributors to change the indicated
> > license of the file.
> 
> OK. Good to know. I am the sole contributor to that file. I also checked and 
> fixed some new files in auparse/ to which I am also the sole contributor at the 
> same time. Everything is good in git and the next release should take care of 
> this issue.

Okay, thank you!

Richard