[alsa-devel] GPL/LGPL licensing of the Alsa library

[Clemens Ladisch]

Ossi Niiranen wrote:
> We recently performed a licensing audit of a larger software project
> incorporating the Alsa library 1.0.19. One issue we identified was
> that although the Alsa library purported to state that the library was
> licensed under the LGPL, there were still several files with third
> party copyright holders that indicated in their header that the file
> in question was licensed under the GPL.

$ grep -rl 'GNU General' alsa-lib/
alsa-lib/COPYING
alsa-lib/aserver/COPYING
alsa-lib/aserver/aserver.c
alsa-lib/include/sound/asequencer.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/asound.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/asound_fm.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/asoundef.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/emu10k1.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/hdsp.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/hdspm.h
alsa-lib/include/sound/sb16_csp.h
alsa-lib/m4/attributes.m4
alsa-lib/src/ucm/main.c
alsa-lib/src/ucm/parser.c
alsa-lib/src/ucm/ucm_local.h
alsa-lib/src/ucm/utils.c
alsa-lib/test/latency.c
alsa-lib/test/oldapi.c
alsa-lib/test/playmidi1.c

The aserver tool and the tests are separate and not part of the library
itself; the UCM stuff is actually LGPL-licensed and mentions the GPL
only in "You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License ...".

Most files in include/sound/ are just copies of the kernel headers.

Is there any specific file that you think would make the resulting
library not LGPL?

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Regards,
Clemens