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