Re: Libiberty license roundup (questions/potential problems)

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden at twcny dot rr dot com>]

DJ said:
>> The fourth are the various files which aren't sure what they're part
>> of; I'd like permission to just fix those all to claim to be part of
>> libiberty, unless there's some reason not to.
>
>The reason is, only the original author can change the copyright terms.

Ah, but this part isn't really part of the copyright terms!

"This file is part of GNU CC.  GNU CC is... ...GNU CC... ...GNU CC..."
can be replaced with
"This program is... ..this program... ...this program..."

without affecting license terms or copyright terms at all, provided it's 
kept consistent.

Here I'm talking about keeping the file under the same license and 
copyright (most of the relevant ones are FSF copyright), but correcting 
the text so they don't claim to be part of various other projects (which 
they obviously aren't, at this point).  I'd be happy if they all said 
simply "This program", or all said "part of gcc", or all said "part of 
libiberty", or even a mix of those three; I'm just trying to root out 
inaccuracy.

I'm most worried about the one which doesn't technically have a license 
for itself ("This file is part of libiberty.  GCC is free software...")
and I'm hoping to avoid this kind of mishmash in the future.

>Some have the exception because they're used in libstdc++, for
>example.  There is no "library as a whole" as far as libiberty is
>concerned; each source file has its own license, and that's pretty
>much the end of the story, since there's little we can do about it.

Ah, so libiberty is always statically linked, and only individual .o 
files are linked with any particular program, so source files under 
different licenses aren't unmanagably comingled?  We should add a note 
somewhere to the effect that it has to remain this way. :-)

--Nathanael