[klibc] [patch 11/12] Unpleasantness in linux/nfs_mount.h

[Erik van Konijnenburg]

On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 08:44:54AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Erik van Konijnenburg wrote:
> > It's copied literally from linux-2.6.1x/include/linux/nfs_mount.h.
> > The file itself does not have a copyright notice, but linux itself
> > has a GPLv2 COPYING file.
> 
> Okay, I probably cannot copy it then.  If there is stuff in util-linux 
> (which I believe is BSD licensed), then that might be usable.

Sigh.

Util-linux, according to the debian/copyright file, is partly GPL,
partly BSD; and of course the mount part happens to be GPL
(in fact its written by the author of linux/nfs_mount.h)

Under the scenes a faire theory (http://www.ivanhoffman.com/scenes.html),
a clean-room reimplementation with mixed GPL/BSD licence would probably be
allowed, but that sounds a bit silly.

Deleting the <linux/in.h> from <linux/nfs_mount.h> is perhaps the cleanest
solution: the kernel compiles perfectly well without it, and it would make
it possible to include <linux/nfs_mount.h> from userland.  Not a short term
solution though.

This raises the reverse question: am I allowed to distribute ipconfig and
nfsmount with my GPL package, and if so, do they need extra licence notices?

Regards,
Erik