[On going...] Multiple license in serviceHelper.py

[buhtz]

Introduction

The issue is most for my own documentation of the process.

Short description of the problem: The qt/serviceHelper.py does have 3 licenses and it is not clear which lines belong to which license.

I have feedback from a Debian Developer that this make things harder for them.

MIT

About the MIT license part related to dbus-python (python-dbus-docs). These are code snippets from the docu which is licensed as MIT. It is unclear if the code snippets themself are covered by this license. I hope to get a clear statement from that project that we can use that snippets and re-license them as GPL-2.0-or-later.

• I opened a ticket in September 2024 without response.
• I contacted the author (Simon McVittie) directly on 29th Dec via his work email at collabora.

CC0 / Public domain

To my understanding it is no problem to re-license public domain code even if we are not the authors.

Summary

If we could get rid of the MIT license, we can re-license the whole file as GPL-2.0-or-later and thats it.

Header of serviceHelper.py

backintime/qt/serviceHelper.py

Lines 1 to 57 in 7f96e5e

	# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2015-2022 Germar Reitze
	# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2008 Canonical Ltd.
	# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2004-2006 Red Hat Inc. <http://www.redhat.com>
	# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2005-2007 Collabora Ltd. <http://www.collabora.co.uk>
	# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2009 David D. Lowe
	#
	# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
	# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
	# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC0-1.0
	#
	# This file is released under several licenses mentioned above. The file is
	# part of the program "Back In Time". The program as a whole is released under
	# GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2). See file/folder LICENSE or go to
	# - <https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-or-later.html>.
	# - <https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html>
	# - <https://spdx.org/licenses/CC0-1.0.html>
	#
	# Note about the licenses by Christian Buhtz (2024-09):
	# Despite extensive research and attempts to contact the aforementioned
	# individuals and institutions, it was not possible to definitively determine
	# which of the mentioned licenses and copyright notices apply to which parts of
	# the code contained in this file. The situation could not be clarified even
	# with the git commit history.
	# It should be noted that, in case of doubt, preference should be given to the
	# strongest or most restrictive license.
	#
	# Before SPDX meta data was added to the file it originally had some comments
	# that are summarized as follows:
	# - Germar Reitze claimed GPL-2.0-or-later in context of Back In Time.
	# - Unknown person claimed GPL-2.0-or-later in context of "jockey".
	# - Read Hat Inc. and Collabora Ltd. claimed MIT License in context of
	# "python-dbus-docs"
	# - David D. Lowe claimed CC0-1.0 (public domain) in unknown context.
	#
	# Because of MIT License the following permission notice need to be included
	# in this file and should not be removed:
	# --- Begin of MIT License permission notice ---
	# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
	# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
	# files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
	# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
	# modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
	# of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
	# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
	#
	# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
	# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
	#
	# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
	# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
	# MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
	# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
	# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
	# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
	# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
	# DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
	# --- End of MIT License permission notice ---