Bug 2353932 - libquadmath missing license text
Summary: libquadmath missing license text
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: gcc
Version: 41
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Jakub Jelinek
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-03-20 20:21 UTC by Matthew Woehlke
Modified: 2025-12-02 10:38 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

Fixed In Version: gcc-15.0.1-0.11.fc42
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2025-12-02 10:38:13 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
GNU Compiler Collection 119397 0 P3 UNCONFIRMED missing license file for SunPro covered sources 2025-03-20 20:21:49 UTC

Description Matthew Woehlke 2025-03-20 20:21:49 UTC
Description of problem:
Portions of libquadmath are distributed under the following license (e.g. https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/blob/9e67a160553c7f06f32c5eb53867c935bc40510f/libquadmath/math/acoshq.c#L6-L13):

  ====================================================
  Copyright (C) 1993 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
 
  Developed at SunPro, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. business.
  Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
  software is freely granted, provided that this notice
  is preserved.
  ====================================================

This notice (in apparent violation of the license terms) does not appear anywhere in the distributed libquadmath package.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
14.2.1-3

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install libquadmath.
2. Try to find the SunPro license text.

Actual results:
Text does not exist in the libquadmath package or in any directly associated package.

Expected results:
Text exists in a file under /usr/share/licenses/libquadmath, or at least /usr/share/licenses/gcc.

Additional info:
First discovered on AlmaLinux 9. While this is partly upstream's fault (n.b. linked bug), ideally a patch would be back-ported to all active distros.

Comment 1 Siddhesh Poyarekar 2025-03-21 02:43:55 UTC
Packages doesn't ship license files for every single license that code in that package may use.  The correct way to see licenses in use is to see package information, where SunPro (that's the SPDX code of the license) is mentioned as one of the licenses:

$ rpm -qi libquadmath
Name        : libquadmath
Version     : 14.2.1
Release     : 7.fc41
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Thu 20 Feb 2025 08:43:10 AM
Group       : Unspecified
Size        : 331220
License     : GPL-3.0-or-later AND LGPL-3.0-or-later AND (GPL-3.0-or-later WITH GCC-exception-3.1) AND (GPL-3.0-or-later WITH Texinfo-exception) AND (LGPL-2.1-or-later WITH GCC-exception-2.0) AND (GPL-2.0-or-later WITH GCC-exception-2.0) AND (GPL-2.0-or-later WITH GNU-compiler-exception) AND BSL-1.0 AND GFDL-1.3-or-later AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft-2-para AND SunPro AND BSD-1-Clause AND BSD-2-Clause AND BSD-2-Clause-Views AND BSD-3-Clause AND BSD-4-Clause AND BSD-Source-Code AND Zlib AND MIT AND Apache-2.0 AND (Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-Exception) AND ZPL-2.1 AND ISC AND LicenseRef-Fedora-Public-Domain AND HP-1986 AND curl AND Martin-Birgmeier AND HPND-Markus-Kuhn AND dtoa AND SMLNJ AND AMD-newlib AND OAR AND HPND-merchantability-variant AND HPND-Intel
Signature   : RSA/SHA256, Sat 11 Jan 2025 06:03:38 AM, Key ID d0622462e99d6ad1
Source RPM  : gcc-14.2.1-7.fc41.src.rpm
Build Date  : Fri 10 Jan 2025 02:18:41 PM
Build Host  : buildhw-x86-06.iad2.fedoraproject.org
Packager    : Fedora Project
Vendor      : Fedora Project
URL         : http://gcc.gnu.org
Bug URL     : https://bugz.fedoraproject.org/gcc
Summary     : GCC __float128 shared support library
Description :
This package contains GCC shared support library which is needed
for __float128 math support and for Fortran REAL*16 support.

Comment 2 Matthew Woehlke 2025-03-21 18:25:04 UTC
I have serious reservations whether that's legal (or at least, compliant; see also my comment on the GCC bug). The license requires "that this notice is preserved". The text "SunPro", distributed only alongside the package, does not appear to meet that condition.

The usual understanding of 'notice required' licenses is that the actual text must appear somewhere in the program materials, ideally in the credits, but at least in an accompanying file.

In any case, this makes life difficult for anyone that wants to a) redistribute software that uses libquadmath and b) err on conservative side with respect to licensing. Notably, the situation in RH/Fedora/etc. is significantly worse than Debian, which compiles and ships license information in a much neater package (see /usr/share/doc/libquadmath0/copyright on any Debian/Ubuntu/etc. distro).

Comment 3 Siddhesh Poyarekar 2025-03-21 20:51:21 UTC
Please raise this with Fedora legal so that one of them can chime in here:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org/

since I don't think this is something developers can come to any conclusion on, especially since you're bringing up questions of legality and/or compliance.  Likewise upstream I would suggest reaching out to the steering committee:

https://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html

to have your concerns addressed.

Comment 4 Adam Williamson 2025-12-02 02:44:47 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora Linux 41 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora Linux 41 on 2025-12-15.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
'version' of '41'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora Linux version. Note that the version field may be hidden.
Click the "Show advanced fields" button if you do not see it.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora Linux 41 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora Linux, you are encouraged to change the 'version' to a later version
prior to this bug being closed.

Comment 5 Jonathan Wakely 2025-12-02 10:38:13 UTC
The license file was added to the RPM in gcc-15.0.1-0.11


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