[wp-hackers] GPL licensing.

[Scott Merrill]

Carthik Sharma wrote:
> The whole email was about the individual source files not having the
> GPL header.
> The interpretations as to what the license.txt in the package covers
> is doubtful, too.
> I hope someone looks into this.

Not having looked through all the source files for every program I've 
downloaded and compiled, I first thought (assumed) that the GPL license 
declaration would _not_ live in each source file.  A quick `grep -r GPL` 
through the Linux kernel, dvdauthor, and MPlayer sources (what I have on 
hand) show a great many more hits than I'd've expected.

I imagine that running the WordPress source through a quick sed (or awk 
or perl or python!) script could quickly resolve this issue.

... I take that back.  Grepping for GPL is not fully accurate.  `head 
/usr/local/src/linux-2.6.6/kernel/*.c` is more instructive, as it just 
shows copyright declarations (usually in Linus' name).  `head 
/usr/local/src/linux-2.6.6/kernel/*.c |grep GPL` yields only one hit.

Looking through the /drivers/ sub-directories in the kernel source show 
a lot more per-file GPL declarations.

Why am I looking through the Linux kernel source?  Because the Linux 
kernel is arguably the "poster child" for a successful GPL product.  I 
don't have Samba sources on hand, else I'd look through there, too, 
since Samba is another GPL success story.

I guess since the Linux kernel sets something of a mixed precedent that 
we ought to look elsewhere.  Or just punt to safety and include a 
copyright and GPL notice in every (.php?) file.