Re: GNU sharutils generated archive license

[Bruce Korb]

On 07/01/17 13:58, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Hello Daniel,
> 
> Daniel Pope wrote:
>> A query has arisen in our organisation as to whether the archives created by
>> the GPLv3-licensed 'shar' command must also fall under the GPLv3.
>>
>> I assumed there is no intention for this to be the case.
> 
> I don't think there in any intention for this either.  I am not the
> maintainer of sharutils but not seeing a response from anyone else I
> am jumping in.  I think this mail may have slipped by the maintainer
> during this busy time of year.  I have added a direct CC on this message.

I did respond to this, however the response is simple so I will
re-create it:

>> However, looking at the GPL FAQ[1],
>>
>>> [Output is copyrightable only] if substantial parts of the output are copied
>>> (more or less) from text in your program.  For instance, part of the output
>>> of Bison (see above) would be covered by the GNU GPL, if we had not made an
>>> exception in this specific case.
>>
>> Due to the nature of shar, I believe it does copy parts of its program text
>> into the archives - in particular the shell code that "extracts" the archive.
>>
>> I can find no mention of a Bison-like disclaimer in the sharutils license. Is
>> this an oversight?

It is not an oversight. The content created to glue together the data
are considered "trivial" and not subject to any copyright claim. That
said, a copyright disclaimer is also trivial and maybe worth doing just
for the sake of providing warm fuzzies for all clients. Therefore, if
the person/entity most anxious about that far fetched fear of
infringement (my opinion) would provide a patch with such a disclaimer,
I would be happy to incorporate the thing.

Anyway, the output should be considered 100% the property of the
owner(s) of the archived data. Any licensing of it would be 100% the
responsibility of the creator of the shar archive.