Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] s390x: Fix the confusing contributions-after-2012 license statements

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 17:00:32 +0100
Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:

> On 02/11/2019 04:31 PM, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> > On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 16:24:48 +0100
> > Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de> wrote:
> >  
> >> On 02/06/2019 02:02 PM, Laurent Vivier wrote:  
> >>> On 06/02/2019 13:58, Cornelia Huck wrote:  
> >>>> On Wed,  6 Feb 2019 13:41:33 +0100
> >>>> Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> >>>>     
> >>>>> The license information in these files is rather confusing. The text
> >>>>> declares LGPL first, but then says that contributions after 2012 are
> >>>>> licensed under the GPL instead. How should the average user who just
> >>>>> downloaded the release tarball know which part is now GPL and which
> >>>>> is LGPL?  
> >>>> FWIW, that statement was added in ccb084d3f0ec ("s390: new
> >>>> contributions GPLv2 or later").
> >>>>     
> >>>>> Looking at the text of the LGPL (see COPYING.LIB in the top directory),
> >>>>> the license clearly states how this should be done instead:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
> >>>>>    License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library. To do
> >>>>>    this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License, so
> >>>>>    that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version 2,
> >>>>>    instead of to this License."  
> >>>> Hm. This talks about GPL v2, not GPL v2-or-later...
> >>>>     
> >>>>> Thus let's clean up the confusing statements and use the proper GPL
> >>>>> text only.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
> >>>>> ---
> >>>>>    linux-user/s390x/target_cpu.h | 19 ++++++++-----------
> >>>>>    target/s390x/cpu.c            | 19 ++++++++-----------
> >>>>>    target/s390x/cpu.h            | 19 ++++++++-----------
> >>>>>    target/s390x/kvm.c            | 19 ++++++++-----------  
> >>>> BTW: Is the original author of the code still around?  
> >>> For the linux-user/s390x/target_cpu.h, it seems this code has been pushed by Alex Graf:
> >>>
> >>> commit 10ec51174ca69a4c3c5149b0b3baaa6ccba66273
> >>> Author: Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>
> >>> Date:   Sat Dec 5 12:44:21 2009 +0100
> >>>
> >>>       S/390 CPU fake emulation
> >>>       
> >>>       Because Qemu currently requires a TCG target to exist and there are quite some
> >>>       useful helpers here to lay the groundwork for out KVM target, let's create a
> >>>       stub TCG emulation target for S390X CPUs.
> >>>       
> >>>       This is required to make tcg happy. The emulation target itself won't work
> >>>       though.
> >>>       
> >>>       Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>
> >>>       Signed-off-by: Aurelien Jarno <aurelien@aurel32.net>
> >>>
> >>> But the "(c) 2009 Ulrich Hecht" is confusing.  
> >> Why? Ulrich was the one that started the port, I then cleaned it up,
> >> improved it, added system emulation and upstreamed it.  
> > It's just a bit confusing that Ulrich does not show up in the sign-off
> > chain.
> >  
> >> What problem exactly are you trying to solve?  
> > The confusing license statements?
> >
> > I thought I'd ask whether the original author had any thoughts; if you
> > think this patch is problematic, I can dequeue it again.  
> 
> You can always combine LGPL and GPL code and the result becomes GPL 
> only, so I see little problem? :)

That was the conclusion, I think :)