Best practice for integrating unlicensed code with other licensed code

[chr]

Hello!

I just wrote a little app that accepts some input and highlights
it using a syntax highlighter. It's the latter that actually does
the hard work. I wrote in the README that some files (which I
indicated) are *not* public domain (and even added another README
in the directory where those files are located). Is it enough?
And, in general, what's the best way to integrate PD with other
kind of licenses?

Thanks.

--
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

[Arto Bendiken]

Hi,

On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 8:55 PM, chr <chr+un...@tx0.org> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I just wrote a little app that accepts some input and highlights
> it using a syntax highlighter.  It's the latter that actually does
> the hard work. I wrote in the README that some files (which I
> indicated) are *not* public domain (and even added another README
> in the directory where those files are located).  Is it enough?
> And, in general, what's the best way to integrate PD with other
> kind of licenses?

That's fine. It doesn't sound like you are misrepresenting the
authorship or license of the copyrighted files in any way, and have
taken satisfactory steps to indicate and adhere to their license terms
(assuming they are under some typical FLOSS license).

As I'm sure we've all seen at one time or another, on one extreme some
projects include a license notice in each and every source file. It
would most often be found directly at the top of the file, though the
end of the file isn't atypical either. While this makes it perfectly
explicit what license particular files are under, and could therefore
be helpful in mixing differently-licensed source files in a single
project, it's also tedious and ugly.

Thankfully, software projects do have well-established conventions,
and the README file is certainly and inarguably among the most
important and long-standing of them. Explaining the license status of
the project in the README file is perfectly conventional, and you've
even taken the additional step of isolating the copyrighted files into
their own subdirectory with their own README file; so, yes, that's
certainly sufficient.

For examples of mixed-license projects, note those projects in the
following list where it is indicated that the project is "mostly" or
"partly" in the public domain:

http://unlicense.org/#public-domain-software

--
Arto Bendiken | http://ar.to/

[chr]

Hi,

Arto Bendiken (Monday 27 December 2010, 04:04):

> On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 8:55 PM, chr <chr+un...@tx0.org> wrote:
> > I just wrote a little app that accepts some input and highlights
> > it using a syntax highlighter. �It's the latter that actually does
> > the hard work. I wrote in the README that some files (which I
> > indicated) are *not* public domain (and even added another README
> > in the directory where those files are located). �Is it enough?

> > [...]

>
> That's fine. It doesn't sound like you are misrepresenting the
> authorship or license of the copyrighted files in any way, and have
> taken satisfactory steps to indicate and adhere to their license terms
> (assuming they are under some typical FLOSS license).

> [...]

Yes, it's GPL.

> Explaining the license status of the project in the README file
> is perfectly conventional, and you've even taken the additional
> step of isolating the copyrighted files into their own
> subdirectory with their own README file; so, yes, that's
> certainly sufficient.

Good to know that a clear README is sufficient.

Best regards,

Christian