[dm-devel] [PATCH 1/2] multipath-tools: move COPYING to COPYING.LESSER

[Martin Wilck]

Hello Christophe,

You've merged the GPL/LGPL patch set from Xose. I'd like to understand
your intentions.

There are >130 files in the multipath-tools source code which don't
have a license header. So far my assumption was that these files were
covered by COPYING, which used to be LGPLv2.0. By changing COPYING to
GPLv2.0, you effectively changed the license of all these files from
LPGLv2.0 to GPLv2.0. *Did you mean that*? Or was it your intention that
these files are now covered by COPYING.LESSER?

If we ship several COPYING files, we need to tell which source files
are covered by which one. Without that, the license situation is now
even less clear than before. Users might even think that they can
freely choose between the two, which isn't the case AFAICT.

I was preparing a README document describing the current state of
affairs regarding the licensing (along the lines of my "multipath-tools 
licenses" posting from Mar 23), but this late move of yours leaves me
confused.

IMHO changing the license would need the consent of the copyright
holders, at least those mentioned in the file headers. I'm currently
assuming that my previous assessment still holds and source files that
have no license header, and for which no other evidence exists, are
covered by LGPLv2.0 aka COPYING.LESSER. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards,
Martin

PS: we also need to include the GPLv3.0 text because of the GPLv3.0
license of libdmmp.

-- 
Dr. Martin Wilck <mwilck at suse.com>, Tel. +49 (0)911 74053 2107
SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton
HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)