Dear Autoconf developers,
First of all, thank you for your work!
My question is related to the license and copyrights. Unfortunately, I
failed to
find information that covers a case like mine. Maybe you know the answers
to my
questions or at least redirect me to someone else who does.
I am working on a set of m4 macros that several BSD-3c-licensed projects
would
like to use. Developers of those projects ask me to put the required
licenses to
the files with my macros so that they can distribute them along with their
code.
1. Some of my macros are written from scratch (they use the Autoconf
macros, of
course, including the internal ones like _AC_COMPILER_EXEEXT_CROSS). This
case
looks like the easiest one to me and I guess, I can add my own license
(preferably, BSD-3c) and copyright header there. Please, correct me if I am
wrong.
2. Some of the macros are refactored versions of the Autoconf macros (NOT
the
Autoconf Archive macros). For example, I copied AC_FC_LINE_LENGTH from
fortran.m4 to a separate file, renamed the macro to ACX_FC_LINE_LENGTH,
fixed a
couple of issues and refactored it. As far as I understand, I must copy the
whole license header from fortran.m4 to my file. There are three things
that I
am not sure about:
a) may I omit the first two lines saying that "This file is part of
Autoconf..." because they look a bit misleading in this context?
b) may I add an extra copyright line?
c) do I have to provide any extra information in the file?
3. I have macros that monkey-patch macros fortran.m4 with m4_bpatsubst and I
have no idea what to do with those. Should they be treated like files
from
the case 1. or the case 2. above?
Thank you in advance for any information related to my questions.
Best regards,
Sergey
