Re: FreeSWITCH license analysis

Richard Laager <[email protected]> Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:29:20 -0600

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

I dug into this a bit. We use FreeSWITCH at my day job, so I'm certainly 
interested in this sort of thing. I'm not a lawyer either, though.

In this particular case, I see @coppice-git's point that these are 
basically math data tables. Personally, I don't think it's a problem in 
this particular case.

That said, the _ideal_ situation would be for the copyright holder to 
explicitly clarify the situation. My recommendation would be:

Best: Change the make_*.c files to be LGPL.

Good: Change the make_*.c files to put some permissive license grant 
into the files. This is the gcc/autoconf/bison exception approach, 
more-or-less. @coppice-git offered this (possibly with some snark 
intended) in:
https://github.com/freeswitch/spandsp/issues/70#issuecomment-1944412131

Looking at the history of these files, as a practical matter, if 
@coppice-git consented, I'd probably call that good enough.

If I were you, I'd respond to that last comment with something like:

I see your point about these being data tables. However, Debian can be a 
stickler for copyright. If you were to make the tools put an LGPL header 
in the generated data files, that would eliminate any doubt, which would 
be helpful to me on the Debian side.

-- 
Richard

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