[ClusterLabs Developers] [booth][sbd] GPLv2.1+ clarification request

[Lars Ellenberg]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 07:12:19PM +0100, Dejan Muhamedagic wrote:
> Hi Jan,
> 
> On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 06:47:37PM +0100, Jan Pokorný wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > during latest reviews of packages building on core cluster
> > infrastructure, it turned out there is a frequented (viral?) issue
> > with source files declaring unusual licence: GPLv2.1+.
> 
> Yes, I'd say that it's all coming from a single source. I suspect
> that nobody's looking at the license, just copies another source
> file from the same project. Anyway, that's what I did in booth.
> 
> Who created the first file with this non-existent license is
> anybody's guess. It could probably be traced, but I doubt that
> it'd help in any way.

Actually it might.

I think that what happened was this:

in the early days of heartbeat, way back when,
source code got "batch tagged" with the license statement:
http://hg.linux-ha.org/heartbeat-STABLE_3_0/rev/4a67fde00b0b#l1.10
2000/07/26 05:17:18

Most stuff got tagged with the LGPL 2.1.

Some time later, someone noticed that in some cases,
a "program" is not a "library", and tried to re-tag
e.g. "api_test.c" with the GPL 2,
but without properly taking the actual suggested GPL 2 stanza,
but by simply dropping "Lesser" and changing "library" to "software".
http://hg.linux-ha.org/heartbeat-STABLE_3_0/rev/bc508513c4dc#l2.10
2000/08/31 05:23:36

 :-(

Both changes predate the GPLv3 by seven years.

>From there it propagated to ipfail.c and attrd.c, which both became
*the* template files to start from when writing daemons and extensions
using the API.

Developers quickly browse their "template",
their "auto-correct" filter reads "GPL 2",
which they are content with,
and in good faith they hack away.

I think it is safe to assume that any developer copying from there meant
to "stay in project" regarding the licensing.

So I move to change it to GPLv2+, for everything that is a "program",
and LGPLv2.1 for everything that may be viewed as a libraray.

At least that's how I will correct the wording in the
affected files in the heartbeat mercurial.

-- 
: Lars Ellenberg
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