bugGNU gettext - Bugs: bug #54809, Missing copyright or license...

 
 

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bug #54809: Missing copyright or license notices in gettext distribution

Submitter:  Ineiev <ineiev>
Submitted:  Tue 09 Oct 2018 09:31:49 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  Other Severity:  4 - Important
Item Group:  None Status:  Fix Released
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  haible
Open/Closed:  Closed

Jump to the original submission

Thu 04 Jul 2019 04:30:13 PM UTC, comment #10: 

I don't think lines 19..66 contain complete set of reasons behind the policy of having copyright and license notices for every file.  If they were, files like ChangeLog wouldn't need notices, and GNU documentation explicitly says they should have them.

Ineiev <ineiev>
Sat 18 May 2019 09:40:31 AM UTC, comment #9: 


> files like HACKING and DEPENDENCIES still lack copyright and license notices

You find the justification in the comments in the 'check-copyright-headers' script, lines 19..66 and 119..122.

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Sat 18 May 2019 05:46:54 AM UTC, comment #8: 

In gettext-0.20.1, files like HACKING and DEPENDENCIES still lack copyright and license notices (note that they were mentioned in the file I attached in the original submission).

Ineiev <ineiev>
Thu 09 May 2019 07:31:22 PM UTC, comment #7: 

The fixes are contained in the gettext-0.20 release.

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Sun 07 Apr 2019 05:13:21 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Fixed through the following changes:

  • Added copyright headers in a few files.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib.git;a=commitdiff;h=91584ed612fa26a505c8fc4c7f6fb19f7413795d
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=bddd863ce3f7285b04dae8823e33b99944c8afd2
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=8cb0846b732b53a36649ff7d27c6e31c570ad53a

  • Replaced texi2html with a version that has a good license notice.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=b7977002847383eb26a5f08d3f9492cc7cb48972
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=0989d3ef1f0506dd014c52696ce0524b9875bbad
(This is what blocked my work on this ticket for a long time. I tried to make texi2html output the titlepage, like the older version of texi2html had done. But this was a dead end. Instead, I accepted the fact that texi2html now drops the titlepage, and enabled the 'Top' node instead.)

  • Wrote a script that verifies that all files have a copyright notice, when appropriate. This script is run during "make distcheck". This avoids that new files with missing copyright headers will be added in future releases.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=63cdedd9b62caa07dfdccb6a406982f88ea3765b

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Fri 05 Apr 2019 01:41:59 AM UTC, comment #5: 

In your attached 'list' you say: "say they are public domain; original copyright holders should be listed". However, https://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html says something different on this topic: "If a file has been explicitly placed in the public domain, then instead of a copyright notice, it should have a notice saying explicitly that it is in the public domain."

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Thu 04 Apr 2019 02:28:38 AM UTC, comment #4: 

Samuel Thibault wrote:

> gettext generates these files without copyright & licence notices:


> ./po/remove-potcdate.sin


This will be fixed in the next release, per commit
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=981c523ddbd1462970335a1069573ca3bdd3df5e

> ./po/quot.sed
> ./po/boldquot.sed
> ./po/en@quot.header
> ./po/en@boldquot.header
> ./po/insert-header.sin
> ./po/Rules-quot


This will be covered by a copyright notice in the Rules.quot file that states "This file, Rules-quot, and its auxiliary files (listed under DISTFILES.common.extra1) are free software; the Free Software Foundation gives unlimited permission to use, copy, distribute, and modify them."

> ./ABOUT-NLS


This will be fixed in the next release, through this commit:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=6b40c1fa79d8d593f77120444dc3aa22293b5bcb
A 1-line file that merely contains an URL is not copyrightable and therefore does not need a copyright notice.

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Sun 18 Nov 2018 06:27:49 PM UTC, comment #3: 


> gettext generates these files without copyright & licence notices:


7 out of 8 files have been handled through this patch:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=commitdiff;h=981c523ddbd1462970335a1069573ca3bdd3df5e

But there is no gettext release that includes this patch, yet.
And ABOUT-NLS is still to be handled.

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Thu 15 Nov 2018 04:07:57 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Hello,

I am being hit by this: the submission of speech-dispatcher to nongnu is being held by this very issue:

https://savannah.gnu.org/task/index.php?15078

Namely, gettext generates these files without copyright & licence notices:

./po/remove-potcdate.sin
./po/quot.sed
./po/boldquot.sed
./po/en@quot.header
./po/en@boldquot.header
./po/insert-header.sin
./po/Rules-quot
./ABOUT-NLS

and thus the resulting source package gets rejected by Ineiev (reporter of this very bug)...

Basically, any project following the GNU Coding Standards, and thus using gettext, would be hit by the issue, and thus get rejected from inclusion in gnu.org or even nongnu.org...

Samuel Thibault <sthibaul>
Wed 24 Oct 2018 02:43:45 AM UTC, comment #1: 

I have removed djgpp/COPYING.DJ . This fixes one part of the issue.

Bruno Haible <haible>
Group administrator
Tue 09 Oct 2018 09:31:49 AM UTC, original submission:  

A quick check reveals a lot of files missing valid copyright or license notices, I attach a list of files against current git HEAD.

This is especially unfortunate because files like ABOUT-NLS go to  other packages using gettext, making them problematic in their turn.

Additionally:

Notices in gettext-runtime/libasprintf/texi2html
gettext-tools/doc/texi2html suggest they are proprietary(!)

In gettext-runtime/man/ngettext.3.in
gettext-runtime/man/ngettext.3.in
gettext-runtime/man/textdomain.3.in
gettext-runtime/man/bind_textdomain_codeset.3.in
gettext-runtime/man/gettext.3.in
gettext-runtime/man/bindtextdomain.3.in
djgpp/COPYING.DJ
years are absent in the copyright notice. (Also, I suggest that man pages should have a copyright section visible to the readers rather than include it in comments.)

Ineiev <ineiev>

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attached Files
file #45167:  list added by ineiev (35KiB - application/octet-stream - list of files in Git missing copyright or license notices (most files in list miss either))

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by sthibaul (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by haible (Updated the item)
  • -email is unavailable- added by ineiev (Submitted the item)
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    Follow 8 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2023-01-04 haible StatusFixed Fix Released
    2019-04-07 haible StatusIn Progress Fixed
        Assigned toNone haible
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2018-11-15 haible Severity3 - Normal 4 - Important
    2018-10-24 haible StatusNone In Progress
    2018-10-09 haible CategoryNone Other
    2018-10-09 ineiev Attached File- Added list, #45167

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