[FFmpeg-devel] [VOTE] License header consistency

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 06:40:06PM +0100, Robert Swain wrote:
> 2008/8/17 Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at>:
> > On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 07:16:01PM +0200, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
> >> On Sunday, 17 August 2008 at 19:08, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> >> > Hi
> >> >
> >> > Simple question
> >> > Do we require all developers to ensure that *GPL license headers are
> >> > precissely copy & pastes of the one master copy diego picked?
> >> >
> >> > My vote is NO
> >> >
> >> > my argument is that this wastes developer time that can be spend doing
> >> > something more usefull even if its just little time, but such little
> >> > times add up, and its not only time to fix the headers but also to diff
> >> > them against a reference before each check in.
> >> > Besides its neither a issue of legal correctness if a LGPL variant is
> >> > used that happens to have a space more or less somewhere, or uses
> >> > "this library" instead of "ffmpeg" or was what diego prefered 4 years ago.
> >>
> >> Why not simply provide a template.h and template.c with the correct headers
> >> already present. Or maybe template_gpl.* and template_lgpl.*.
> >
> > iam all for it if #include "template_lgpl.h" is ok
> 
> No one would ever see this preprocessed code with the license header
> in it, would this be legally air-tight? If not, is there any legally
> air-tight way we can centralise the licenses such that something
> concise in source files can identify the code as using one of our
> chosen licenses?
> 
> > otherwise no i am not because every random file from current ffmpeg could be
> > used as well to copy and paste it. And practice tells us this doesnt work
> > out, its very common that people end up commiting headers that are different
> > In my case in pca.c it was ffmpegs header just a few years old.
> 
> I don't understand this part of your argument. You're saying it's not
> OK to have some template for the license header from which everyone
> should copy and paste for new files because copying and pasting from
> any file in the FFmpeg source tree in practice doesn't work because
> someone may have committed an incorrect license header at some point.
> 
> The point was to have one file with an agreed copy of the license
> which is considered correct. New files could copy and paste from this
> file to create their license header and know it should be correct. I
> don't see why this is a bad idea as it solves the problem of copying
> and pasting from either anywhere, or from any FFmpeg source file with
> the desired type of license, and having the wrong
> version/format/whatever.

iam not against template_*gpl

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
-- Xenocrates
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