Hello Ben!
Thanks for so promptly reporting.
> There is a license conflict that technically prohibits the
> distribution of your software. Most of your code contains a
> non-copyleft but permissive license. However, modem_at.c carries a
> GPL license.
>
> This in itself is not a huge problem. Your license is substantially
> similar to other licenses that the FSF says are GPL compatible (e.g.
> the ZPL or the Cryptix General License).
>
> The inclusion of the GPL licensed file triggers the requirements of
> section 2b of the GPL, which requires that the entire work be GPL'd.
> As I said before your license is compatible with the GPL so this on a
> cursory review wouldn't be a problem.
>
> However, you do not include source for the dsplibs.o or the amrlibs.o
> file. This conflicts with section 3 of the GPL that requires the
> source code be made available.
Yes, conflict is obvious (of course IANAL).
>
> Solutions to the problem are as follows:
>
> 1) License all files under the GPL and include source for the two
> object files.
>
> 2) Change the license on modem_at.c. How you do this depends upon to
> what degree you own the copyright to this code.
>
> a) You have complete copyright to the code and remove the GPL
> license
> replacing it with your existing license. Alternatively, you
> could dual license (i.e. say you can use either your license or
> the GPL). Both of these are essentially the same as your license
> is GPL compatible anyway.
>
> b) You do not have complete copyright and adapted the code from a
> GPL
> source. In which case you are violating that persons copyright
> as you are not including any copyright indicating that. I
> suspect due to the lack of the copyright notice for something
> like that that this isn't the case. However, if it is you would
> need to get the permission to relicense the code under your
> license or rewrite the code from scratch.
>
> I believe this conflict is relatively easy to resolve. I anticipate
> you can do 2a and continue on.
As fast fix I am going to replace modem_at.c file header - 2a.
>
> I'm also CC'ing debian-legal on this as they distribute your code in
> the sl-modem-daemon package. The package is currently in non-free.
> Doing 1 would result in it being able to move to free (unless someone
> else sees another problem). However, until 2 is done I'd suspect
> Debian is going to have to remove the package.
>
> Additionally, there are other files (kernel-ver.c, all the files in
> patches and scripts) which do not contain any license at all.
> Appropriate copyright notices should be added to them. The debian
> startup script appears to have been contributed by a 3rd party so
> you'd need to contact that individual to get the appropriate copyright
> notice.
At the moment all 'scripts' directory content was contributed by users
and included (then included) AS IS. Those files are not part of
SmartLink product, redistribution is permitted by contributors.
> And the ALSA patches would need to be GPL licensed in order
> to be applied and used.
I don't see any problem here. This patch consists one new GPL licensed
file, and modifications of GPL licensed files(ALSA drivers) - those
modifications becomes GPL by default.
Also the patch itself becomes obsolete since ICH based modem support was
included in ALSA main tree.
> It may be useful to include a COPYING file
> that applies your license to any file that doesn't say otherwise
> within its contents.
Agree. Thanks for suggestion.
>
> If you have any questions about this please let me know. I'll be more
> than happy to spend some time with you explaining the problems and
> working with you to reach a resolution to this licensing problem.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Sasha. ('slmodem-2.9.x' maintainer).
>
> --
> Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> http://ben.reser.org
>
> "Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be
> looking."- H.L. Mencken
>
