File headers on 3rd party files [was Re: ICLA needed?]

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> Also, there are no unmodified 3rd party files.  Third party files were used as starting points for the development of NuttX-specific applications.  All were highly modified and converted to the NuttX coding standard. 

See here for how to treat 3rd party works [1]. In general the changes need to be significant for the header to change. reformatting or even rewriting in another language is not a significant change as far a copyright/licensing is concerned.

> We also do a less common thing that you should be aware of:  We have build scripts that download 3rd party code from the source repositories or releases, apply patches to it, and build it into NuttX. 

That's fine as long as the licenses are not Category X.[2]

> The 3rd party code itself is never included in a NuttX release but the scripts that will install it are.

Thanks,
Justin

1. https://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#3party
2 https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-x

Re: File headers on 3rd party files [was Re: ICLA needed?]

[Gregory Nutt <sp...@gmail.com>]

>> I would never permit anything that was not BSD or MIT into the repositories on into the build (and now Apache).  It is our policy that there will be no licensing surprises to the end-user.  There should be no concerns there.
> When I did a quick review of the last release I did find one GPL file. But no issue we’ll fix this later and double check the dependancies.

And I removed it!  It was only needed for a 2000-ish era board:

commit 897378bc292fc1ff5bbcd3ba616e2cafb8cd5f90
Author: Gregory Nutt <gn...@nuttx.org>
Date:   Mon Dec 9 11:29:12 2019 -0600

     Remove support for generation of RRLOAD binary files.  The RRLOAD 
binary format was used with Linux BSPs from www.ridgerun.com circa 
2000-2001.  It is still need by the the c5471 board if that bootloader 
is used.  Removes the CONFIG_RRLOAD_BINARY option and tools/mkimage.sh

     This change was motivated by the presence of the mkimage.sh file 
under tools.  That is the tool that created the RRLOAD binary format.  
That bash script has a GPL license and, hence, may not be included in an 
Apache-licensed project.

Re: File headers on 3rd party files [was Re: ICLA needed?]

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

> I would never permit anything that was not BSD or MIT into the repositories on into the build (and now Apache).  It is our policy that there will be no licensing surprises to the end-user.  There should be no concerns there.

When I did a quick review of the last release I did find one GPL file. But no issue we’ll fix this later and double check the dependancies.

Thanks,
Justin

Re: File headers on 3rd party files [was Re: ICLA needed?]

[Gregory Nutt <sp...@gmail.com>]

>> We also do a less common thing that you should be aware of:  We have build scripts that download 3rd party code from the source repositories or releases, apply patches to it, and build it into NuttX.
> That's fine as long as the licenses are not Category X.[2]

I would never permit anything that was not BSD or MIT into the 
repositories on into the build (and now Apache).  It is our policy that 
there will be no licensing surprises to the end-user.  There should be 
no concerns there.