From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: a.oikonomopoulos@vu.nl (Angelos Oikonomopoulos) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:18:34 +0200 Subject: [Cocci] licensing concerns with cocci patches In-Reply-To: References: <50870DB7.8010601@vu.nl> Message-ID: <508717BA.2040002@vu.nl> To: cocci@systeme.lip6.fr List-Id: cocci@systeme.lip6.fr On 23/10/2012 11:42 ??, Julia Lawall wrote: > On Tue, 23 Oct 2012, Angelos Oikonomopoulos wrote: [...] >> 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 :) > > Not quite. Because thre is no GPL on the replace. The user writes the > replace himself. What is being discussed is semantic patches that are > GPL'd, not the fact that Coccinelle itself is GPL'd. Oh, I misunderstood the issue in question then, sorry for my careless reading. I hope everyone agrees that patches that merely report potential issues are fine. In the case that a semantic patch adds significant amounts of original code, it does sound that the authors of the semantic patches might need to grant an explicit exception. I seriously doubt that the output of patches like andand.cocci (or any search-and-replace-style transformation) is copyrightable, however :) BTW, you might also consider asking the SFLC for pro-bono advice on this https://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/ HTH, Aggelos