Re: Yet another license clarification

On 12/12/23 06:36, Sergey Kosukhin wrote:
> 1. Some of my macros are written from scratch (they use the Autoconf
> macros, of
> course, including the internal ones like _AC_COMPILER_EXEEXT_CROSS). This
> case
> looks like the easiest one to me and I guess, I can add my own license
> (preferably, BSD-3c) and copyright header there.

Yes, that's correct.

> 2. Some of the macros are refactored versions of the Autoconf macros (NOT
> the
> Autoconf Archive macros). For example, I copied AC_FC_LINE_LENGTH from
> fortran.m4 to a separate file, renamed the macro to ACX_FC_LINE_LENGTH,
> fixed a
> couple of issues and refactored it. As far as I understand, I must copy the
> whole license header from fortran.m4 to my file. There are three things
> that I
> am not sure about:
>     a) may I omit the first two lines saying that "This file is part of
>        Autoconf..." because they look a bit misleading in this context?
>     b) may I add an extra copyright line?
>     c) do I have to provide any extra information in the file?

The answers to (a) and (b) are "yes". For (c) it's "no". However, you 
must redistribute a copy of the GPL itself (the "COPYING" file in 
Autoconf) though of course this is not in the .m4 file itself.


> 3. I have macros that monkey-patch macros fortran.m4 with m4_bpatsubst and I
>     have no idea what to do with those. Should they be treated like files
> from
>     the case 1. or the case 2. above?

It depends on what "monkey-patch" means, but in general these sound like 
they would be derivative works and so are case 2.

Hope this helps.