mirror of https://git.tukaani.org/xz.git
90 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
XZ Utils Licensing
|
|
==================
|
|
|
|
Different licenses apply to different files in this package. Here
|
|
is a summary of which licenses apply to which parts of this package:
|
|
|
|
- liblzma is under the BSD Zero Clause License (0BSD).
|
|
|
|
- The command line tools xz, xzdec, lzmadec, and lzmainfo are
|
|
under 0BSD except that, on systems that don't have a usable
|
|
getopt_long, GNU getopt_long is compiled and linked in from the
|
|
'lib' directory. The getopt_long code is under GNU LGPLv2.1+.
|
|
|
|
- The scripts to grep, diff, and view compressed files have been
|
|
adapted from GNU gzip. These scripts (xzgrep, xzdiff, xzless,
|
|
and xzmore) are under GNU GPLv2+. The man pages of the scripts
|
|
are under 0BSD; they aren't based on the man pages of GNU gzip.
|
|
|
|
- Most of the XZ Utils specific documentation that is in
|
|
plain text files (like README, INSTALL, PACKAGERS, NEWS,
|
|
and ChangeLog) are under 0BSD unless stated otherwise in
|
|
the file itself. The files xz-file-format.txt and
|
|
lzma-file-format.xt are in the public domain but may
|
|
be distributed under the terms of 0BSD too.
|
|
|
|
- Translated messages and man pages are under 0BSD except that
|
|
some old translations are in the public domain.
|
|
|
|
- Test files and test code in the 'tests' directory, and
|
|
debugging utilities in the 'debug' directory are under
|
|
the BSD Zero Clause License (0BSD).
|
|
|
|
- The GNU Autotools based build system contains files that are
|
|
under GNU GPLv2+, GNU GPLv3+, and a few permissive licenses.
|
|
These files don't affect the licensing of the binaries being
|
|
built.
|
|
|
|
- The 'extra' directory contains files that are under various
|
|
free software licenses. These aren't built or installed as
|
|
part of XZ Utils.
|
|
|
|
The following command may be helpful in finding per-file license
|
|
information. It works on xz.git and on a clean file tree extracted
|
|
from a release tarball.
|
|
|
|
sh build-aux/license-check.sh -v
|
|
|
|
For the files under the BSD Zero Clause License (0BSD), if
|
|
a copyright notice is needed, the following is sufficient:
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) The XZ Utils authors and contributors
|
|
|
|
If you copy significant amounts of 0BSD-licensed code from XZ Utils
|
|
into your project, acknowledging this somewhere in your software is
|
|
polite (especially if it is proprietary, non-free software), but
|
|
it is not legally required by the license terms. Here is an example
|
|
of a good notice to put into "about box" or into documentation:
|
|
|
|
This software includes code from XZ Utils <https://tukaani.org/xz/>.
|
|
|
|
The following license texts are included in the following files:
|
|
- COPYING.0BSD: BSD Zero Clause License
|
|
- COPYING.LGPLv2.1: GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1
|
|
- COPYING.GPLv2: GNU General Public License version 2
|
|
- COPYING.GPLv3: GNU General Public License version 3
|
|
|
|
A note about old XZ Utils releases:
|
|
|
|
XZ Utils releases 5.4.6 and older and 5.5.1alpha have a
|
|
significant amount of code put into the public domain and
|
|
that obviously remains so. The switch from public domain to
|
|
0BSD for newer releases was made in Febrary 2024 because
|
|
public domain has (real or perceived) legal ambiguities in
|
|
some jurisdictions.
|
|
|
|
There is very little *practical* difference between public
|
|
domain and 0BSD. The main difference likely is that one
|
|
shouldn't claim that 0BSD-licensed code is in the public
|
|
domain; 0BSD-licensed code is copyrighted but available under
|
|
an extremely permissive license. Neither 0BSD nor public domain
|
|
require retaining or reproducing author, copyright holder, or
|
|
license notices when distributing the software. (Compare to,
|
|
for example, BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License which does have
|
|
such requirements.)
|
|
|
|
If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask for more information.
|
|
The contact information is in the README file.
|
|
|