[Nfd-dev] Moving and re-licensing parts of NFD code to ndn-cxx (was Re: License boilerplate for code imported from NFD to ndn-cxx)

[Alex Afanasyev]

In any case. Let me try to close this particular issue and this is how we should have handled it in the first place.

* * *

We are moving several pieces of code from NFD codebase (GPL licensed) to ndn-cxx codebase (LGPL licensed).
These include:

- [NFD] core/ethernet.cpp -> [ndn-cxx] src/util/ethernet.cpp
- [NFD] core/ethernet.hpp -> [ndn-cxx] src/util/ethernet.hpp
- [NFD] core/face-uri.cpp -> [ndn-cxx] src/util/face-uri.cpp
- [NFD] core/face-uri.hpp -> [ndn-cxx] src/util/face-uri.hpp
- [NFD] tests/core/ethernet.cpp -> [ndn-cxx] tests/unit-tests/util/ethernet.cpp
- [NFD] tests/core/face-uri.cpp -> [ndn-cxx] tests/unit-tests/util/face-uri.cpp

As part of the move, it is necessary to re-license these files to be LGPL license, instead of original GPL, as the licenses are not compatible.  

We will retain the original copyright no these files, which is collectively owned by Regents of the University of California, Arizona Board of Regents, Colorado State University, University Pierre & Marie Curie, Sorbonne University, Washington University in St. Louis, Beijing Institute of Technology, and The University of Memphis.

This re-licensing is performed according to our previous agreement to keep the codebase open.  Please let us know if there are specific concerns this re-licensing.

* * *

---
Alex


On Oct 7, 2014, at 10:34 AM, Alex Afanasyev <alexander.afanasyev at ucla.edu> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 7, 2014, at 9:44 AM, Davide Pesavento <davide.pesavento at lip6.fr> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 4:02 AM, Alex Afanasyev
>> <alexander.afanasyev at ucla.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In this specific case, as Davide pointed out, we are required by the law to preserve the original copyright.  Technically speaking, we will need agreement with each copyright holder to change the license, but I hope this is not an issue at the moment.
>>> 
>> 
>> Hope doesn't help in lawsuits. It's better to do this right. And it's
>> also very simple in this case since I am the sole author of the
>> Ethernet code, while FaceUri was written by Junxiao, Wentao, and you
>> (according to git). It takes less than 5 minutes to ask 3 people if
>> they're ok with the relicensing.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not that simple.  Only copyright "owners" can re-license, which in our case are not the authors of the specific code, but institutions in NDN project.
> 
> The objective for NDN project is to have code open.  The agreement that we had before starting the project is that code can be relicensed later, if needed.  This, technically, is the time for invoking such an agreement.
> 
> ---
> Alex