How to free free code?

Question

I am working on an open source project, and part of it is licensed under a permit written by the original developer. The license is very short and not very detailed. Moreover, it is not compatible with the license that the rest of the project uses.

I would like to ask the original developer to review the code under a different open source license. The problem is that I do not know what they need to do for this. For example, I know that the GPL manual says that each file must have a specific “header” that refers to the license. Other licenses (say, BSD) are supposedly “activated” in a similar way.

The source code is already in SCM. Do I need to ask a person to modify each individual file, or can I somehow reduce his work?

(In case you are wondering why I want to avoid asking someone to commit the changes - this is because there really is quite a lot of work. The project is only for Windows, and for SCM, Mercurial on BitBucket, SSH is required Getting this to work on Windows for someone who has no experience, even if they are good developers, is anything but trivial.)

Answer 1

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Answer 2

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, #. MIT/X11:

/*
  Copyright (c) 2009 Benjamin J. Setel

  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
  obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
  files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
  restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
  copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
  copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
  Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
  conditions:

  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
  included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
  EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
  OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
  NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
  HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
  WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
  FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
  OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
 */

using System.IO;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System;


namespace Tools
{
    class LicenseInjector
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Please enter the full root folder path (i.e. /home/usr/code/): ");
            string folder = Console.ReadLine();

            Console.WriteLine("Please enter full path to license data: ");
            string LicensePath = Console.ReadLine();

            FileStream ReadFile = new FileStream(LicensePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ReadFile);
            string license = sr.ReadToEnd();
            sr.Close();
            ReadFile.Close();

            Recursion.RecursivePrepend(folder, license);

        }//Main
    }//LicenseInjector

    public static class Recursion
    {
        public static void RecursivePrepend(string folder, string license)
        {
            string [] Subdirs = Directory.GetDirectories(folder);
            if(Subdirs.Length != 0)
            {
                foreach(string s in Subdirs)
                    RecursivePrepend(s, license);
            }

            string[] files = PatternFind.DirPatternFinder(folder, ".cs");  
            foreach(string s in files)
                Prepend.Prepender(s, license);       

        }//RecursivePrepend()
    }//Recursion

    public static class PatternFind
    {
        public static string[] DirPatternFinder(string ToLook, string Pattern)
        {
            Regex r = new Regex(Pattern);
            string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(ToLook);
            List<string> results = new List<string>();

            for(int i = 0; i < files.Length; ++i)
            {
                    Match m = r.Match(files[i]);
                    if(m.Success)
                        results.Add(files[i]);
            } 
            return results.ToArray();
        }//DirPatternFinder()

        public static string PatternFinder(string Pattern1, string Pattern2)
        {
            Regex r = new Regex(Pattern1);
            Match m = r.Match(Pattern2);
            return m.ToString();
        }//PatternFinder()
    }//PatternFind
    public static class Prepend
    {
        public static void Prepender(string path, string ToPut)
        {
            FileStream ReadFile = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ReadFile);
            string s = sr.ReadToEnd();
            sr.Close();
            ReadFile.Close();


            bool HasLicense = false;
            if(s.Substring(0, 2) == "/*")
                HasLicense = true;

            if(HasLicense) //If the file already has the license, we have to strip it out before adding it back in
                           // so that the file does not wind up with more than one copy.
            {
               int i = 1;
               string c = "(";
               while(c != "*/" && i < s.Length)
               {
                    c = s.Substring(i, 2);
                    ++i;
               }
               if(String.Compare("\n\n", s.Substring(i+1, 2)) == 0) //If there already a newline after the license
               {
                    s = s.Remove(0, i+3);               
                }               
               else
               {             
                    s = s.Remove(0, i+2);
               }
            }


            FileStream WriteFile = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Write);
            StreamWriter FileWriter = new StreamWriter(WriteFile);
            FileWriter.Write(ToPut);
            FileWriter.Write("\n");
            FileWriter.Write(s);
            FileWriter.Close();
            WriteFile.Close();
            return;            
        }//Prepender()
    }//Prepend
}//Tools