android thread library ported to uclibc

Jeremy Bowen jeremy.bowen at pertronic.co.nz
Thu Nov 20 22:35:50 UTC 2008


On Friday 21 November 2008 10:16:54 am matthieu castet wrote:
> Jeremy Bowen wrote:
> > Yes but I couldn't find a license document. In the absence of such a
> > document and as the "bionic" code is a sub-directory of the Android code,
> > I find it hard to believe it is licensed any differently to the parent.
>
> What's
> http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/bionic.git;a=blob;f=libc/NOTICE;h
>=e8076b5cc1697d180e0e1efe787fe3b88a93e06a;hb=HEAD and

A huge fscking mess, that's what :-)

There are no less than 19 difference copyright holders listed here with 16 
different licenses!!!!!

> For me all mention 3-clause bsd license clearly.

No. Not all are simple 3-clause BSD licenses. Some are 2-clause BSD licenses. 
Some are unique licenses made up by the copyright holder. (The Carnegie 
Mellon one is an interesting one too.)

I'm not saying that these are necessarily GPL incompatible, just that for 
inclusion into a GPL licensed project, the license must be clear.

> You got MODULE_LICENSE_APACHE2 file with the license file
> (http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/dalvik.git;a=blob;f=NOTICE;h=c5b
>1efa7aac764ae6d8da63476a2d5cec02a6a5d;hb=HEAD). The copyright and license
> headers on source file mention the license APL2 

Yes and the very fact that the source code you submitted doesn't CLEARLY 
identify which license applies is the reason I'm asking for clarification.

> But each file I imported from bionic got a Copyright _and_ a license
> notice. The Copyright are "Copyright (C) 2008 The Android Open Source
> Project All rights reserved."
> The license is 2 or 3 clause bsd license [0].

Many of the source files you submitted have no such copyright notice or 
license on them. Did you write them ? Did you copy them ? Who owns the 
copyright ?

libc_pthread_init.c for example.

> Does I miss something ?
>
> I don't really understand what do you want. For me everything is there.

Obviously everything is not there.

> BTW you are you ? Are you a uClibc developer ?

I could be a lawyer for the FSF or a Microsoft employee. What difference does 
it make ?

All you need to know is that I have an interest in the uClibc codebase.

> > If you can point to a definitive document that explicitly states that
> > some particular piece of Android code is NOT covered by the ASL then this
> > may be sufficient. Until then, it would be impossible to incorporate any
> > such code into uClibc.
>
> - Linux kernel [1] is part of Android code  and is NOT covered by the
> ASL  : it is GPL V2

Yes the license for the linux kernel is clear and therefore (hypothetically) 
possible to incorporate into uClibc

> - yaffs [2] is part of Android code  and is NOT covered by the ASL : it
> is GPL (notice the MODULE_LICENSE_GPL file)

ditto.

> - webkit [3] is part of Android code  and is NOT covered by the ASL to
> my knowledge

...but you don't know what license applies ? Therefore until you DO know which 
license applies, NOT possible to safely include as part of uClibc.

Code with an unclear license leads to trouble for both proprietary and free 
software.

> - it is the same for qemu, pppd, iptable, bluez, dropbear [4] (and note
> the MODULE_LICENSE_XXX indicating the license of the package) .

This just strikes me as odd. The tree seems to be littered with zero-length 
files whose name may, or may not, indicate which license applies. The actual  
definitive text of the said license is missing or it's location is unclear.

I guess I was looking for something like the following documents somewhere in 
the Android source tree:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

> I assumed the Copyright _and_ a license notice on each file were enough.
> That's always I proceeded in other projects. I don't understand what you
> want more.

As I said, many of the files you submitted contain neither license nor 
copyright information.

I would feel nervous if your code was included in uClibc without the 
derivation being clear, because that would impact on my ability to continue 
to use uClibc.

-- 
Cheers
JeremyB



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