[systemd-devel] License of systemd API

[Lennart Poettering]

On Thu, 26.09.13 15:52, Olav Vitters (olav at vitters.nl) wrote:

> At Hackers News, someone (seemingly involved with OpenRC) claims that
> the systemd API is somehow licensed under the LGPL. Thus making it
> impossible for OpenRC to implement the same API.
> See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6446700 for the entire comments
> and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448366 for the specific claim
> made by the user synchronise.
> 
> As far as I understood, an API cannot be under any license/copyright.
> Just the method/code implementing it is.
> 
> Anyway, to avoid any misunderstandings, could a main developer clarify
> if the systemd API is or is not under a copyright / license and if it
> is, which?

IANAL, but I think most folks agree that APIs are not copyrightable in
most counties.

The header files certainly carry the LGPL headers. But that doesn't even
matter as most of the APIs are actually exposed via D-Bus, where you
don't have any headers... And besides that: the glibc headers carry the
word for word identical copyright header (only replacing "systemd" by
"GNU C Library"). So if those headers are OK for usage with OpenRC the
systemd headers should be too.

And really, licensing is how Canonical might deal with competition, but
not us, we picked the most liberal, compatible and well-known copyleft
license there is to stay away from all that mess. They can do with the
headers whatever they want, I really don't care, and I pretty much wrote
them all...

And even if that was an issue, and LGPL would apply to the header files,
what would stop the OpenRC folks to implement such a library and make it
available under the same terms? That doesn't even have to touch the rest
of the OpenRC code. I mean, if they want to be compatible with our
library then all they need to make sure that they don't restrict their
licensing more than LGPL...

Anyway, to me this appears as an uneducated attempt to blame other
people for their own incapability...

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.