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Conflicting licence files: LICENSE (MIT) and COPYING (GPLv3) #60
Description
Summary
The repository contains two licence files that disagree, and some source files carry copyright notices that don't match either. It's unclear which licence AutoQ is distributed under.
What the repository says now
| Where | What it says |
|---|---|
LICENSE |
MIT License, "Copyright (c) 2023 Wei-Lun Tsai". GitHub detects the repo as MIT. |
COPYING |
The full text of the GNU GPL version 3. |
README.md |
No licence section. |
| Sources | 22 files under src/, include/autoq/ and cli/ have headers such as "AUTOQ Tree Automata Library / Copyright (c) 2011 Jiri Simacek" or "Copyright (c) 2011 Ondra Lengal" (one says 2015), with no licence named. Examples: include/autoq/autoq.hh, include/autoq/aut_description.hh, include/autoq/simulation/binary_relation.hh, src/explicit_lts_sim.cc. |
vata |
A prebuilt x86-64 executable committed at the repo root (added in 47e640e, "add vata binary"). Nothing in src/, include/ or cli/ references it any more. |
History
- 0ead683 (2022-05-10, "can load") added
COPYING(GPLv3). - a15b2dc (2023-04-19, "add CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license") added
LICENSEwith the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 text. - c0fee05 (2023-05-24, "Update LICENSE to MIT") replaced it with MIT.
COPYINGwas left in place.
Why it matters
People who want to reuse or package AutoQ can't tell whether the terms are MIT or GPLv3. If the 2011 files come from an earlier GPL-licensed code base, distributing them under MIT would need the agreement of their copyright holders. The listed holders are Jiří Šimáček and Ondřej Lengál.
Suggested resolution
- Decide on the licence with all copyright holders: Wei-Lun Tsai, the authors of the 2011 files, and other contributors as needed.
- Keep exactly one licence file. Remove
COPYINGif the answer is MIT, or replaceLICENSEif it is GPLv3. - If the 2011 files stay under a different licence, say so in their headers and in a short License section of the README.
- Either document where the
vatabinary comes from and under which licence, or remove it, since nothing uses it.
The new landing page (#58) links to LICENSE without naming a licence, so it needs no change either way.
Activity
Use the MIT License only (closes #60)