[Users] Openvirtuozzo kernel patch license questions

[Kir Kolyshkin]

Christian Aichinger wrote:

>On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 11:48:01AM +0400, Dmitry Mishin wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>GPL doesn't require to post 'free software' statement in each file, but 
>>require to provide it with each Program copy. So, I think we'll fix this 
>>issue by means of SWSOFT_COPYING file in our SRPM and tarballs.
>>Anyway, we'll fix this issue somehow. Thanks for your point.
>>    
>>
>
>Just shipping a COPYING file is not enough. You need a definitive
>statement somewhere that the patches (and RPMs, ..) can be used under
>the terms of the GPL.
>
>It's probably not strictly necessary to include the GPL header in
>every file, but stating "All rights reserved" in every file seems a
>bit contradictory to me.
>
>In this case I think the file-specific license (all rights reserved)
>overrides the global "use this under the GPL" statement on your
>homepage (unless you make it clear there that these file-specific
>restrictions don't apply).
>
>Just removing the "All rights reserved" statements from the file
>(or replacing them with a "This is part of GPL'ed software") would
>be the easiest way IMHO.
>  
>
Chris,

We might just add "Licensed under GNU GPL version 2" statement right 
after SWsoft's copyright statement in our next kernel release.

As you may notice, some files in vanilla 2.6 kernel also have "All 
rights reserved." thing (I found 702 such files in 
linux-2.6.12-gentoo-r6 kernel sources), and some of those files are 
GPLed (while some others are not - those are mostly device drivers), so 
this (having 'all rights reserved' and 'covered by gnu gpl') is not 
contradictory. Look into kernel/auditsc.c for example (I used version 
from 2.6.12).

Regards,
  Kir.

--- 
Kir Kolyshkin <kir at sw.ru>  ICQ 7551596