Copyright and license information missing from source files

[hmh]

Currently, the source code lacks copyright information headers on the files, as well as a COPYING or LICENSE file with the GPL version 3 text. This is a problem for Linux distros (e.g. Debian would not accept it for inclusion), at the very least.

The name of the license the code is released under is only present in README.md (GPLv3), and it does not mention the main authors or copyright date. It is also not extremely clear whether the code is released under the GPLv3 only (atypical), or "GPL version 3 or any later version of the GPL" (typical).

The license text itself is not present anywhere.

We'd be willing to help on this if you don't want to waste time with the busywork of annotating every source file: just tell me the copyright line you'd like to have added to every source file, e.g. Copyright (c) #### (your real name, or the name of the institution), and which version of the GPLv3 (just v3, or v3 and later) you want, and I will submit a PR.

For the record, unless requested otherwise, any changes contributed by NIC.br are/will be:
Copyright (c) 2019 NIC.br
And distributed under the same license(s) as the source file they apply to.

[hmh]

SPDX identifiers that might be relevant:

• SPDX-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only
• SPDX-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later

[schoenw]

An alternative could be to move everything under the BSD 3 clause license, which seems to be the same license that the IETF is using for code components.

[hmh]

Yes, SPDX-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause would be a good option.

However, I'd strongly recommend using the Apache 2.0 license instead of BSD-3-Clause, to avoid patent traps. Both Apache 2.0 and GPL-3.0* provide adequate protection against such traps AFAIK.

[hmh]

For the record, anything the SIMET team submits as a PR to be merged upstream into lmapd will be licensed under whatever license you chose for lmapd, regardless of which compatible license we decide to use for our simet-lmapd fork (we're likely to keep using GPL-3.0*).

[hmh]

@schoenw, any news on this front?

Regardless of whether lmapd cold move to a BSD 3 clause license or Apache 2.0 license, it would be really nice to know whether it is under GPL-3.0-only or GPL-3.0-or-later currently...

[hmh]

@schoenw, it would be really nice to move forward with this issue: the current state is somewhat uncomfortable for anyone using the lmapd reference code, or derivatives.

As things stand, we can reasonably safely assume the status-quo license is "GPL-3.0" by reading README.md strictly to the letter.

Would you accept a PR that properly adds that license (GPL-3.0) to every place it should be in the source code?