Re: license & copyright patch to MELT for dual GPLv3+ & GFDL1.2+

[Basile Starynkevitch <basile at starynkevitch dot net>]

On Sun, 2010-06-06 at 19:39 -0400, Richard Kenner wrote:
> > My bad understanding of the paragraph above makes me believe that some
> > FSF people (RMS?) are suggesting that a license applies to small chunks
> > of a file, so that some file could have some of its lines licensed under
> > GPL and other lines licensed under LGPL. I believe that my understanding
> > is incorrect.
> 
> My reading is exactly the opposite: that because a file can have only
> ONE license, the only way it could possibly be dual-licenced is if
> EVERYTHING in the file was licensed in that way.

I might have made some mistakes in English (remember that I am not a
native English speaker, that I am not an American citizen, and that I am
not a lawyer), but this is exactly what I believe have written in the
concerned MELT source files, and what I understood the FSF wanted.

So any constructive suggestions, that is a patch to the
gcc/melt/warmelt*melt files in the GCC MELT branch, is welcome.

Such a patch does not require any understanding of the MELT dialect or
implementation, except that comments are starting with a semicolon ';'
like in most Lisp dialects, and that the '(comment' notation is for a
comment also output in the generated C sources. You can understand that
notation as a directive (similar to some #pragma in C) ordering the MELT
translator to output a C comment.

By the way, the generated C sources in the MELT branch (sitting inside
gcc/melt/generated/*.c) have been regenerated just after the copyright
notice change, and I also updated the wiki page
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/MELT%20tutorial 's attachement
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/MELT%
20tutorial?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=GCC-MELT--gcc-internals-snapshot.pdf 
so that the generated PDF documentation is the one after copyright
notice change (as you can see there, the generated chapter has a notice
about its GFDL license).

In other words, I believe that the gcc/melt/warmelt*melt files are dual
licensed under GPLv3+ & GFDL1.3+ as I believe I was suggested by Karl
from the FSF.

I might have understood wrongly what the FSF wants, but I fully
meta-misunderstood what I did not understood.

I am patiently waiting for some constructive suggestions (and I did ask
and got helpful advices from my employer  [CEA] 's laywers, those that
designed the CECILL license http://cecill.info/ so they do understand
the GPL & other free licenses).

Cheers.

-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
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*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***