[patch] support partiton labels/uuids of common filesystems

[David Zeuthen]

On Fri, 2004-04-30 at 19:21, Joe Shaw wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-04-30 at 19:14 +0200, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > I see that the code is licensed under the GPL which, in principle, is
> > okay since HAL is licensed under both the GPL and AFL 2.0, and we
> > already got some code that is GPL, though only for the Linux 2.6
> > backend. (I don't really want GPL-only code in the generic parts of the
> > HAL daemon)
> >
> > An interesting, and important, question is whether applications using
> > HAL (through either D-BUS or libhal (libhal is strictly AFL2.0/GPL like
> > D-BUS)) needs to be GPL since we got GPL-only code in a single backend?
> > 
> > My interpretation of the GPL says 'no', but IANAL. Anyone got some more
> > profound insight on this issue?
> 
> My interpretation is that if libhal is GPL and the applications that
> link against it choose GPL, then those applications must also be GPL.
> But it's not an issue if they're strictly using the D-BUS API, since
> that goes across process boundaries.
> 

Indeed, process boundaries being the keyword here. In fact libhal is
offered under both the AFL2.0 and the GPL which means that non-GPL apps
can use libhal given that they choose the (to be revised) AFL2.0
license. Which is intentional and stuff.

> As for the daemon, since nothing external is linking against it, it's
> not a big deal if portions of it are GPL-only.
> 

Right. In fact I'm happy to have GPL-only code for the Linux-specific
backend(s), but I would very unhappy to have GPL-only code in the
generic parts. So, this is looking fine.

> On a related note, are there plans to relicense away from the AFL 2.0?
> I know that Novell and probably also Red Hat will not be able to ship
> the software as long as that's true.  (The patent clauses are simply too
> strong)
> 

Yes, as soon as the paperwork is ready[1] we'll relicense all files that
is currently licensed under AFL2.0 (the number of copyright holders is
small :-)

Cheers,
David

[1] : http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/dbus/2004-March/000917.html


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