Use SPDX for Dolphin licensing info #9862
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SPDX standardizes how source code conveys its copyright and licensing information. See https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/1-rationale/ . SPDX tags are adopted in many large projects, including things like the Linux kernel.
This code was part of Dolphin's relicensing from v2 to v2+ a while back, we just never updated these copyright headers. I double-checked that segher gave us permission to relicense this code to v2+ on 2015-05-16.
The use of a LICENSES/ directory is recommended by the REUSE guidelines available at https://reuse.software/
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As a note, I found that we're currently distributing at least one file (TAP_Win32.h) which seems to be GPLv2-only. I think this might technically be a license violation, though it could easily be argued that the contents of this file are not copyrightable (it's mostly trivial API definitions and some constants). Not planning to fix this here. |
The new COPYING file does not directly copy the GPLv2 text, since this license does not apply to some parts of the repository. Instead, it documents our usage of SPDX tags and where to find license information.
Public domain does not have an internationally agreed upon definition, As such it's generally preferred to use an extremely liberal license, which can explicitly list the rights granted by the copyright holder. The CC0 license is the usual choice here. This "relicensing" is done without hunting down copyright holders, since it is presumed that their release of this work into the public domain authorizes us to redistribute this code under any other license of our choosing.
JosJuice
approved these changes
Jul 5, 2021
lioncash
approved these changes
Jul 6, 2021
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Looks good to me. Look out down below, takin' the plunge. |
PEmu2
reviewed
Jul 21, 2021
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The open source community is converging on a standard way for projects to convey licensing information, using the SPDX standard (http://spdx.dev). Replace Dolphin's current ad-hoc way of providing license information and use SPDX tags instead through
Source/. Also reflect in the top-level licensing info that we have a bunch of licenses in here, not everything is GPLv2+, though we atempt to make the aggregate GPLv3 compatible.Along the way fix a few issues, like files that were not properly relicensed back in 2015 even though we got the author's permission to do so.
Note: this is just a first step, there is still plenty that could be improved: figuring out how to handle externals, adding licensing info for stuff outside of Source/, etc. Ideally we would follow the http://reuse.software guidelines imo.