[task #16553] Submission of sox_ng

[SoX NG]

Follow-up Comment #4, task #16553 (group administration):

Thanks again.

I've done an analysis of its source code and optional libraries. The optional
libraries with which it can link are all GPLv2 or later, LGPLv2 or later,
LGPLv2.1 or later, Two-clause BSD, Xiph, Wavpack or Zlib except for two,
Opencore and VisualOn AMR, which are "Apache"
https://sourceforge.net/p/opencore-amr/code/ci/master/tree/LICENSE
which I gather is incompatible with GPLv3 or later.

(Two clause BSD)

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

(Xiph)

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

- Neither the name of the Xiph.org Foundation nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.

(WavPack)

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
    * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice,
      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
    * Neither the name of Conifer Software nor the names of its contributors
      may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
      without specific prior written permission.

(zlib)

Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute
this software, or portions hereof, for any purpose, without fee,
subject to the following restrictions:

 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you
    must not claim that you wrote the original software.  If you
    use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product
    documentation would be appreciated, but is not required.

 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must
    not be misrepresented as being the original software.

 3. This Copyright notice may not be removed or altered from any
    source or altered source distribution.

The sox source code has a blanket COPYING notice of GPLv2 or later and
LGPLv2.1 or later but the 197 individual source files are as big a hotch-potch
as you could imagine.

141 are free software copyright to one or more individuals with year stamps
and with GPLv2 or later or LGPLv2.1 or later notices. A few only say "(c)
2006-2012 SoX contributors" or "(c) SoX Contributers" which I assume are not
legally binding copyright notices as they do not indicate a physical person or
legal entity, or even the year in one case.

38 are copyright and "freely distributable for any purpose"

2 are both of the above.

8 have no copyright statament or are "Written by" someone with no copyright
line.

6 are copyright to someone, usually a SoX developer, but contain no licence
terms. Of these, some authors may no longer be contactable.

Lastly there's the included lpc10 library, which has no copyright statements
and was published in Fortran in October 1993 by the US Department of Defence,
and translated to C in 1996. Its translator still maintains it on giuthub and
writes in its README file:

"Because of the history of this implementation, the copyright and license
status is still not completely clear to me, for reasons discussed further
below. It might be in the public domain, but if the legal answer matters to
you in any significant way, I suggest consulting an attorney who specialies in
intellectual property law."

but I assume that, as it was published without copyright statements, and long
ago, it is in the public domain.

So, to sum up possible problems:

The AMR libraries with which it can optionally link are under an Apache
license which is said to be incompatible with GPLv3 or later. Can we either
dike their use out (it's a rare compressed speech format) or maybe make
"configure" default to not using them unless the user says "--enable-amr" or
whatever the runes are?

The 6 source files containing copyright notices but no explicit licensing text
say one of:

* Copyright 2008 Chris Bagwell And Sundry Contributors

* (c) 2000.04.15 Chris Ausbrooks <weed@bucket.pp.ualr.edu>
 *
* based on vol.c which is
* (c) 20/03/2000 Fabien COELHO <fabien@coelho.net> for sox.

* (c) march/april 2000 Fabien COELHO <fabien@coelho.net> for sox.

and vol.c:

/* Copyright (c) 20/03/2000 Fabien COELHO <fabien@coelho.net>
* Copyright (c) 2000-2007 SoX contributors

while wav.c says all of:

* Copyright 1998-2006 Chris Bagwell and SoX Contributors
* Copyright 1997 Graeme W. Gill, 93/5/17
* Copyright 1992 Rick Richardson
* Copyright 1991 Lance Norskog And Sundry Contributors

Of these, Chris Bagwell was the main SoX maintainer from 1996 to 2015 though
no one has heard from him for some years. However, his explicit copyright to
GPLv2 or later or LGPLv2.1 or later appears in many other source files, so I
think this is covered by "patent error" (i.e. "obvious error").

I have written to Fabien Coelho, who is still active, asking him to say
something like "I hereby grant permission to use my code that is included in
SoX for any purpose" or "I hereby grant permission to use my code that is
included in SoX under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License,
or (at your option) any later version."

At that point I should be able to fix all the source files before importing
them into savannah by including the GPLv3 or later in all of them, thus
upgrading the existing copyrights, or applying GPLv3 or later to the public
domain code, and remove or make configure default to off for the AMR
libraries. Does that sound right?


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