Re: licensing Autoconf macros

[Peter Simons]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz writes:

 > http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices.html#License-Notices

I see. Thanks for the pointer, I hadn't know that. Looks
like all-permissive is the way to go then.


 > # Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
 > # Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 > #
 > # This file is free software; the Free Software Foundation
 > # gives unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute it,
 > # with or without modifications, as long as this notice is preserved.
 >
 > I'm not sure this is as important for the archive, but I,
 > for one, would like to distribute my macros under such an
 > all-permissive license.

Right now, there is no way to specify a license per macro.
Adding some sort of @license or @copyright tag is the
obvious choice.

Just a question: Wouldn't the text above have to be adapted
for each submission? The copyright isn't really owned by the
FSF, it's owned by the person who's written the macro, so
you'd have to personalize that text to some extend, right?


 > 1) add the standard GPL blurb + the above exception +
 >    copyright owner to all macros
 >
 > 2) ask each author whether s/he agrees to relicense
 >    his/her macros under an all-permissive license (I do),
 >    or plain GPL, in order to get rid of the above
 >    exception
 >
 > 3) reject new submissions without license

 > Note: some macros (e.g., Braden's) used to have @copyright and
 > @license tags, but I can't find example of these anymore.

Yes, that's because these tags never did anything anyway, at
least here they didn't. ;-) I could certainly add support
for an appropriate meta tag in the format -- suggestions are
welcome.

Peter