svn 14760 (new diff applet)

[Rob Landley]

On Monday 10 April 2006 1:29 pm, Rich Felker wrote:
> > This is what I'm trying to clarify.  It's downright _silly_ to use the
> > short boilerplate for GPL, and yet have the full BSD notice there.  And
> > if the GPL notice plus full GPL text doesn't cover the requirements of
> > the BSD notice (warantee disclaimer and copyright notice from author),
> > then _THE LICENSE IS NOT COMPATIBLE_.
>
> This is nonsense. GPL also allows a warranty disclaimer and of course
> having the author's copyright is allowed (and desired). Don't start
> thinking you're so special that you discovered a new incompatibility
> between the GPL and BSD that none of the countless people who have
> read and studied them in detail were able to find over the past 15+
> years...

I don't think I have either.  What I think I can do is move the appropriate 
copyright notice to the top of the file and remove the rest of the BSD 
boilerplate (as redundant) from the GPL file in BusyBox.  I'm trying to see 
what other people think about this.

There are a number of files in the tree where people were apparently afraid to 
remove the mattress tag, and thus put the GPL at the start of the file and 
the BSD terms at the end of the file to let the code in between insulate them 
from each other or something.

find . | grep -v svn | xargs grep "REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS"
./networking/wget.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./networking/inetd.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./networking/ping6.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./sysklogd/logger.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./shell/ash.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./coreutils/od.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./coreutils/env.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./coreutils/cal.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./libbb/dump.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./libbb/bb_echo.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS 
``AS IS'' AND
./miscutils/strings.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./util-linux/fdisk.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
./util-linux/hexdump.c: * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND 
CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND

Unless the busybox versions of these files are, in fact, dual licensed in 
their entirety, this notice is inaccurate, misleading, and presumably 
unnecessary.

Separately, I would like to remove this excess verbiage for the same reason I 
wanted to use a one-line GPL boilerplate.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.