[alsa-devel] Possible GPL-licensed header included in alsa-lib

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

I recently reviewed the alsa-lib 1.0.27.2 source code from a licensing
perspective to ensure compliant usage and distribution. It seems the
intention is for the libraries to be covered by LGPL.

I had a look at include/list.h, which seems to be licensed under
GPL-2.0. It does not have a license header or any other copyright
information, but it states it was taken from Linux 2.4.0:

include/list.h, line 5:
| This code was taken from the Linux 2.4.0 kernel. [jaroslav]

I'm not sure one could argue that the header was trivial, especially
since it does not only contain constants, structures and interface
definitions, but also implementations of inline functions.

I found one previous inquiry about a similar issue[1], but it does not
cover the include/list.h header.


Two questions:
 1. Have the copyright holders of the code in question agreed to
    re-license under a different, LGPL-preserving license and, if yes,
	is there some documentation about that?
 2. If the header is indeed covered by GPL-2.0, would you accept patches
    to replace it with a different implementation, e.g. Rusty Russell's
	MIT-licensed list from ccan[2]?


[1] http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2011-March/038267.html
[2] http://ccodearchive.net/info/list.html


Thank you for your time,
Clemens Lang
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Clemens Lang
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