| |
| 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. |
| |
| 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. |
| |