[Cocci] licensing concerns with cocci patches

[a.oikonomopoulos@vu.nl (Angelos Oikonomopoulos)]

> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> wrote:
>> On 22 October 2012 13:05, Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@lip6.fr> wrote:
>>> My understanding is that the output of a semantic patch should not be GPL.
>>> But I am not an expert.  In any case, that is the intent.  We would
>>> certainly be happy that the scripts be part of BSD.
>>
>> Awesome. Hopefully I will be able to start gathering a set of useful
>> scripts soon.
>
> So... We should talk a bit more :) Also I'd love to help iron out any
> FUD over licensing issues given that it seems the intent expressed is
> not to enforce requirement of output being GPL derivative.

Hello,

I apologize for not replying in-thread, but I'm only an occasional user 
of coccinelle, so I wasn't subscribed to the list.

The concept that the GPL would apply to the output of spatch, just 
because spatch itself is under the GPL is well beyond far-fetched. By 
the same logic, it could as well apply to the results of a 
search-and-replace in emacs :)

The FSF claims that this is not even legally possible, let alone a 
requirement of the GPL. That goes for any version of the GPL, but I'll 
just link to the GPLv2 FAQ, as that's what coccinelle uses:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GPLOutput

Coccinelle itself does not produce any code, it transforms code 
according to supplied rules. If the rules are under the GPL, again there 
is no requirement about the result of the transformation whatsoever. 
There are numerous clauses in the GPLv2 to support this statement, but 
I'll just quote the 0th one:

"The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from 
the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on 
the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)"

As a general rule of thumb, one should keep in mind that the the GPL is 
concerned with preventing the GPL code itself from becoming proprietary 
and does NOT try to force people to open up their code.

I'm happy that coccinelle is around, I like having it in my toolbox and 
I would like it if even more projects used it (and more semantic patches 
became available). I would not want to see its adoption hindered based 
on some unfounded misconception, nor would I want to see this 
misconception spread to the coccinelle community :)

FWIW, the DragonFlyBSD project (to which I occasionally contribute) has 
been happily using coccinelle semantic patches with good results for a 
while now and I'm glad to hear FreeBSD is going to embrace it further.

Hope this helps,
Aggelos