Re: [chrony-dev] Changing License to GPL for candm.h

[Walfred Tedeschi <wtedeschi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17.04.23 15:30, Miroslav Lichvar wrote:

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 02:09:44PM +0200, walfred tedeschi wrote:

            Would it be possible to change the license of the specific
interface of the chronyc so as to allow a broader usage of it and avoid
reinventing the code differently in other libraries and languages?

Specifically the file meant is candm.h which makes the interface with
chonyd.

It might be possible. There are only three authors having some lines
in candm.h and addressing.h (which is required by candm.h). It's
Richard Curnow, Gautier PHILIPPON, and me. We would need an approval
to make a licensing change, if files containing only definitions of
structures can actually have a copyright. There is no code, not even
function declarations.

If they agree it would be great. I think even if we consider a library as

described below, being able to rely on a header to build on top it would easier

the maintenance of the code.

It's not clear to me how useful this would really be without an
accompanying library and if it's worth the complication. The previous
discussions were mainly about that IIRC. Is the application supposed
to be only monitoring of chronyd, or also controlling it?

Maybe it would be better to start a separate libchrony project from
scratch, with less restrictive licensing, simple API, an ABI that
doesn't need to break with future updates, and also support for
previous versions (chronyc supports only the current version). At
least the monitoring part, it shouldn't be too much work. I can look
into it. If it turns out to be working well, we can consider adopting
it in chrony and rewriting chronyc to use it.

Here would you be considering to host the code in the same repository?

Thanks a lot!

-Fred