Re: [Xenomai] xenomai-forge: multiple COPYING files

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>]

On 2013-10-02 13:42, Thomas De Schampheleire wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The (L)GPL requires that every distribution of a derived work is
> accompanied with the license of the program (xenomai-forge).
> Currently, xenomai-forge contains several COPYING files:
> 
> ./kernel/cobalt/nucleus/COPYING
> ./kernel/cobalt/COPYING
> ./kernel/cobalt/rtdm/COPYING
> ./include/COPYING
> ./lib/alchemy/COPYING
> ./lib/psos/COPYING
> ./lib/vxworks/COPYING
> ./lib/analogy/COPYING
> ./lib/cobalt/COPYING
> ./lib/copperplate/COPYING
> 
> An embedded build system like buildroot [1] has legal-info facilities
> to mark for each package which license it uses, and where the license
> files is located. A user can easily generate an overview of the
> license information for all packages used in the system, and contains
> almost everything necessary to comply with the (L)GPL. In buildroot,
> this is done with 'make legal-info'.
> 
> In the case of buildroot, the license files are copied one by one in a
> directory named after the package. This would essentially mean:
> cp <xenomai-source>/kernel/cobalt/nucleus/COPYING licenses/xenomai/COPYING
> cp <xenomai-source>/kernel/cobalt/COPYING licenses/xenomai/COPYING
> cp <xenomai-source>/kernel/cobalt/rtdm/COPYING licenses/xenomai/COPYING
> ...
> 
> Clearly, the fact that all license files have the same name poses a
> problem here. In order to have all files, one would either need to
> rename them, or duplicate the directory structure.
> 
> Instead of moving this complexity outside of xenomai-forge (to the
> build system), I would like to discuss how it can be solved within
> xenomai-forge itself.
> 
> Here are two proposals:
> 1. Is it really necessary that there are multiple COPYING files? Is it
> not possible to have one COPYING file in the root of the project, and
> move the exception specified in include/COPYING to that file? This
> approach is similar to many many other open-source projects.
> 
> 2. Alternatively, what about renaming the license files to a unique
> name, e.g. COPYING.alchemy, COPYING.psos, COPYING.cobalt-nucleus ?
> Then, copying these files to one directory is possible without overwriting.

Having multiple, per-subdir COPYING files is by far not that uncommon.
So improving buildroot for such scenarios seems worthwhile.

That said, we need consolidation and clarification, specifically to
cover all files outside kernel/cobalt, include and lib. Will write a
patch, and another one to append suffixes to the subdir COPYING files.

Jan

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