clean up license headers

[LudwigKnuepfer]

There exist various license headers throughout RIOTs sources. Also some files don't have license headers at all.

• Unify all lgpl license headers.
• Unify all 'other license' headers for each other license.
• Identify files without licenses, contact their original authors and get them to explicitly license the respective files under the lgplv2. (see license issues in RIOT #560)

[miri64]

PR #590 and #591 are related

[Kijewski]

Do you have a proper grep at the ready to test if this is solved?

[mehlis]

I vote for closing this, because I think we have done your job for core and sys....

[LudwigKnuepfer]

@Kijewski I don't have a grep ready..

[LudwigKnuepfer]

working on it

[LudwigKnuepfer]

@mehlis DO NOT CLOSE THIS ISSUE!

It is all still a mess.

[LudwigKnuepfer]

Should I create a PR for this? https://github.com/LudwigOrtmann/RIOT/tree/licenses

[thomaseichinger]

@LudwigOrtmann go for it

[LudwigKnuepfer]

#1181

[OlegHahm]

#1181 is not tagged for the release -> untag this one as well?

[LudwigKnuepfer]

Untag

[thomaseichinger]

@LudwigOrtmann should (finally) be fixed with #1217, reopen if you disagree

[LudwigKnuepfer]

The unification part is incomplete

[LudwigKnuepfer]

boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h is GPL licensed - @Kijewski do you have any suggestion how to resolve it?

[Kijewski]

We could ignore it?

[LudwigKnuepfer]

ignore != resolve..

[OlegHahm]

We're down to 4:
boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h is GPL licensed - no idea how to handle this.
cpu/lpc2387/include/lpc23xx.h doesn't give any license (only "All rights reserved.") - we should check if we can figure out if NXP specifies a license for that file somewhere.
cpu/stm32f1/include/stm32f10x.h is under "CMSIS license" - why do we have this only for the F0?
tests/unittests/map.h looks like MIT - should be fine!?

[LudwigKnuepfer]

@haukepetersen Can you share some wisdom regarding cpu/stm32f1/include/stm32f10x.h?

[haukepetersen]

I did not add that file... :-). But by looking at it, it seems to me that it does not have a license. Not sure what to do here. I guess we could i) contact ST, ii) ignore the file, iii) do something else? No idea...

[LudwigKnuepfer]

So there is no possibility to replace it with one that comes with a license?

[Kijewski]

I could delete the file multiboot.h and only keep the definition of multiboot_header_t, and use bare numbers instead of the defines MULTIBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC, MULTIBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS and MULTIBOOT_HEADER_CHECKSUM. But actually I just would ignore the license for that particular file. I don't think that multiboot.h can force the GPL. It only contains facts, no logic.

[N8Fear]

What about using version 3.6.1 (read http://chmorgan.blogspot.de/2013/05/watch-out-for-out-of-date-stm32.html ). It has a license attached to it but doesn't seem to be officially released (though it's available for example via github)? I don't know if it is "drop in" or if it requires additional work, though...
As stated in the linked post: the license should allow getting it via github....

[OlegHahm]

cpu/lpc2387/include/lpc23xx.h doesn't give any license (only "All rights reserved.") - we should check if we can figure out if NXP specifies a license for that file somewhere.

mbed uses the same header file and states that the "the code in this repository is Apache licensed", so I guess it should be safe for us to add this license header, too. Does anyone disagree?

[LudwigKnuepfer]

nay yes (see #2079)

[LudwigKnuepfer]

As of today (no change):

$ ./dist/tools/licenses/check.sh 
file has an unknown license header: 'boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h'
file has an unknown license header: 'cpu/lpc2387/include/lpc23xx.h'
file has an unknown license header: 'cpu/stm32f1/include/stm32f10x.h'
file has an unknown license header: 'tests/unittests/map.h'

[LudwigKnuepfer]

I'm not going to work on this anytime soon.

[LudwigKnuepfer]

For the record - the state of the issue:

$ ./dist/tools/licenses/check.sh
file has an unknown license header: 'boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h'
file has an unknown license header: 'cpu/stm32f1/include/stm32f10x.h'
file has an unknown license header: 'tests/unittests/map.h'

[miri64]

• boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h is GPLv2+
• cpu/stm32f1/include/stm32f10x.h seems to be a proprietary license digged into the doxygen
• tests/unittests/map.h Is just another version of MIT

Nothing that isn't fixable :-)

[haukepetersen]

for the stm32f1 this should be fixed with #4681

[miri64]

The other ones still remain.

[miri64]

Regarding boards/x86-multiboot-common/include/multiboot.h: according to @Kijewski (#4703 (comment)) there is a version with MIT license now: https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/multiboot/html_node/multiboot_002eh.html

[miri64]

Finally fixed \o/