[Trisquel-devel] zlib 1.2.3.3

[Rubén Rodríguez Pérez]

This one slipped out, sorry for the delay.

First of all, INAL, so this comes only from my experience:

Including the author name, copyright owner and year, and the license
header in every file is the recommended practice. But as far as you
include a per-project license file in the root project, it is OK.

As said in the GPL3 howto (*not* stated in the actual legal terms):

"It is safest to attach them [the headers] to the start of each source
file to most effectively state the exclusion of warranty; and each file
should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the
full notice is found."

> I found, in zlib 1.2.3.3, the following problems:
> 
> 
> 1º - In zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/delphi/ZLib.pas is written: 
> "
> {*******************************************************}
> {                                                       }
> {       Borland Delphi Supplemental Components          }
> {       ZLIB Data Compression Interface Unit            }
> {                                                       }
> {       Copyright (c) 1997,99 Borland Corporation       }
> {                                                       }
> {*******************************************************}
> "

Stating that the copyright owner is Borland doesn't imply that the file
is licensed in a different way than the other files in the package. It
would be a different case if it said "All rights reserved".

> 
> 2º - In zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/untgz/untgz.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/minizip.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/miniunz.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/iowin32.h , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/iowin32.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/ioapi.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/ioapi.h and 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/minizip/crypt.h  there are no licenses. Only autors 
> names.
> 
> 
> 3º - In zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/testzlib/testzlib.c , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/masmx64/inffasx64.asm , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/iostream2/zstream_test.cpp , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/iostream/test.cpp , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/iostream/zfstream.cpp , 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/iostream/zfstream.h and 
> zlib-1.2.3.3.dfsg/contrib/infback9/inffix9.h  there is no license.

The same principle applies to those. Most free packages include files
without a license header, I've just found one in the GNU grep package
-as it made me curious, I've checked the latest version, and it is now
fixed to comply with the GNU policies-.