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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE components in Il2CppOutputProject

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by mwalus, Jan 20, 2021.

  1. mwalus

    mwalus

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2017
    Posts:
    25
    Hello,
    I build UWP application using Unity 2019.4, using IL2CPP scripting backend (AR application for HoloLens 2). I build player -> Visual Studio solution is created. I scanned exported project using BlackDuck software to identify Open Source components.

    It occurs that one of the Il2CppOutputProject components named "libatomic_ops" is distributed under "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE".

    Does that mean that our customers may ask for access to code of whole developed solution?

    libatomic_ops_.png

    Thank you
     
  2. Kurt-Dekker

    Kurt-Dekker

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2013
    Posts:
    38,514
    First check the license agreement for Unity. There may be warranties in there. I leave it to your and your legal counsel to evaluate the risk.

    Beyond that you probably want to contact Unity support directly via email for that one. Anything any non-Unity employee writes back to you in this forum will be irrelevant in a legal context.
     
    Joe-Censored likes this.
  3. JoshPeterson

    JoshPeterson

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2014
    Posts:
    6,920
    Thanks for raising this issue! We've spent some time reviewing this code and working with our legal team about this.

    There should be no GPL code used in this repository or shipped with Unity, so no customer should be able to make a GPL claim against your software.

    The repository in question here is https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/libatomic_ops. A while back we audited the code to ensure that there was no GPL code used by Unity. We then removed the GPL code from our fork of the repo to be sure. However, I did not remove this COPYING file properly.

    I've just made a change to that repository that removed the COPYING file because the GPL does not apply. Iv'e also added a proper license.md file written by our legal team.
     
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  4. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Mar 26, 2013
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    11,847
    So basically, false alarm?
     
  5. JoshPeterson

    JoshPeterson

    Unity Technologies

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    Jul 21, 2014
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    Yes!
     
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  6. mwalus

    mwalus

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2017
    Posts:
    25
    Sorry for delayed response.
    Thank you very much @JoshPeterson for your explanations and changes in libatomic_ops repository.

    One more question: how this change will be applied in Unity app. I just tried build again my app (to empty dir) using 2019.4.23 LTS and files are still there. How your change in repo will be "included" in Unity app?
     
  7. JoshPeterson

    JoshPeterson

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2014
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    We only made this change in the latest version of Unity, as we did not determine there was really any GPL violation here. So Unity 2021.1 and later should not have this stray COPYING file. For earlier version of Unity, you can remove it manually.
     
    Joe-Censored likes this.
  8. mwalus

    mwalus

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2017
    Posts:
    25
    OK. Thank you very much once again.