From 63b06273bc4b1db2e79bf80e7fa51ce291e25685 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: P. J. McDermott Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 22:02:46 -0400 Subject: copyright: Rewrite. In general, BusyBox is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0, but there are many other licenses that must also be reproduced along with binary copies of BusyBox (e.g. 3-clause BSD and LGPL 2.1). GPL 2.0 § 3 allows us to distribute BusyBox in object code form, subject to the terms of §§ 1 and 2 plus some additional terms. § 1 requires that we "conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice". Under a strict reading, this means we have to accompany copies of BusyBox in object code form with an "appropriate copyright notice". Also under a strict reading, a notice like "BusyBox is copyrighted by many authors between 1998-2012" may not be "appropriate". However, the common legal theory suggests that GPL 2.0 only requires copyright notices on copies in source code form. That is, the source code (provided pursuant to § 3) must comply with §§ 1 and 2. Indeed, many distributors (e.g. Fedora, Parabola, and probably all hardware vendors) of GPL-licensed software don't include copyright notices with all of their object code copies. We'll at least include some general copyright notice. This copyright notice comes from the busybox binary itself [1][2]. [1]: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-July/078149.html [2]: http://git.busybox.net/busybox/commit/?id=0e941d5 --- (limited to 'build') -- cgit v0.9.1