[Qemu-devel] License issues

[Qemu-devel] License issues

[Simson Garfinkel]

Greetings.  Yesterday I posted a query regarding the license of some  
of the .h files.

Basically, all of the image layer files area clearly licensed to have  
no restrictions, but some of the necessary .h files are missing that  
license.

Who is responsible for maintaining the license of the .h files?

Regards,


Simson Garfinkel

Re: [Qemu-devel] License issues

[Anthony Liguori]

Simson Garfinkel wrote:
> Greetings. Yesterday I posted a query regarding the license of some of 
> the .h files.
>
> Basically, all of the image layer files area clearly licensed to have 
> no restrictions, but some of the necessary .h files are missing that 
> license.
>
> Who is responsible for maintaining the license of the .h files?

Whoever originally committed the code. If you look at the LICENSE file, 
I think the safe thing to assume is that if a file doesn't have an 
explicit license associated with it, it is licensed under the GPL.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Regards,
>
>
> Simson Garfinkel
>
>
>

Re: [Qemu-devel] License issues

[Simson Garfinkel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1299 bytes --]


On Aug 14, 2008, at 7:47 AM, Anthony Liguori wrote:

> Simson Garfinkel wrote:
>> Greetings. Yesterday I posted a query regarding the license of some  
>> of the .h files.
>>
>> Basically, all of the image layer files area clearly licensed to  
>> have no restrictions, but some of the necessary .h files are  
>> missing that license.
>>
>> Who is responsible for maintaining the license of the .h files?
>
> Whoever originally committed the code. If you look at the LICENSE  
> file, I think the safe thing to assume is that if a file doesn't  
> have an explicit license associated with it, it is licensed under  
> the GPL.

Thanks for responding, Anthony.

I agree with the explicit statement. However, it doesn't seem to make  
sense in this case. The disk image .c files are all explicitly  
unrestricted, but they include .h files for which the license is  
unstated. So my feeling is that this is an oversight.

Is this even relevant for .h files?  They do not contain executable  
code that is compiled.

The reason that I am asking is that I want to use the QEMU VDK support  
for a forensic software library that I maintain, but I do not want the  
library to be GPL'ed. If I need to, I'll rewrite the .h files, but  
this seems like a waste of time if it is not necessary.

-Simson




[-- Attachment #2: smime.p7s --]
[-- Type: application/pkcs7-signature, Size: 2413 bytes --]

Re: [Qemu-devel] License issues

[Carlos A. M. dos Santos]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Simson Garfinkel <simsong@acm.org> wrote:
> Greetings.  Yesterday I posted a query regarding the license of some of the
> .h files.
>
> Basically, all of the image layer files area clearly licensed to have no
> restrictions, but some of the necessary .h files are missing that license.
>
> Who is responsible for maintaining the license of the .h files?

Fabrice Bellard  is the copyright holder of QEMU so is the only person
legally allowed to add license statements to those files. (Assuming
that he owns them, of course, but experience taught me never make
assumptions about copyrights and licenses.)

-- 
If you think things can't get worse it's probably only
because you lack sufficient imagination.