[Xen-devel] Re: Copyright/licensing info ?

[Sean Dague <sean@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 07:02:11PM +0000, Keir Fraser wrote:
> 
> On 14 Dec 2005, at 18:35, Sean Dague wrote:
> 
> >>Those comments were removed because there si a single license for all
> >>Xen public interface header files in xen/include/public/COPYING.
> >
> >In my limitted understanding of US Copyright laws, there needs to be a
> >license stanza in every file, otherwise default copyright is assumed.  
> >At
> >least as a safety measure there should probably be a header in each of 
> >those
> >files.
> 
> I removed a license string, not a copyright string. What would a 
> 'default license' be? Covering multiple files with a single COPYING 
> file seems standard practise (e.g., Linux).

Sorry, default copyright, not default license.  

First, IANAL, so this might not be 100% correct, however, in my
understanding of US copyright (which applies to at least some portion of the
Xen code), it goes something like this.

In the US everything caries implicit copyright.  To ensure that something
remains open source software, it needs to carry a license statement in that
file.  An external file referencing headers saying "Those files are under
this license" isn't necessarily adequate.

In the "better safe than sorry" realm, it would be good to have a BSD
license stanza in each of the header files, if that is the final license
they will be under.

        -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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