linux-kernel - Re: [patch V5 01/11] Documentation: Add license-rules.rst to describe how to properly identify file licenses

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Date:   Fri, 29 Dec 2017 23:15:35 -0500
From:   Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>
To:     Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@...b.com>
Cc:     Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Kate Stewart <kstewart@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Russell King <rmk+kernel@...linux.org.uk>,
        Rob Herring <rob.herring@...aro.org>,
        Jonas Oberg <jonas@...e.org>, xfs <linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org>,
        Charlemagne Lasse <charlemagnelasse@...il.com>,
        Carmen Bianca Bakker <carmenbianca@...e.org>,
        "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
        Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
        Andreas Dilger <adilger@...ger.ca>
Subject: Re: [patch V5 01/11] Documentation: Add license-rules.rst to
 describe how to properly identify file licenses

On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 11:17:54PM +0100, Philippe Ombredanne wrote:
> > As far as I know, none of the licenses explicitly say
> > copyright license must be on each file.  Just that the distribution of
> > source must include the copyright and license statement.  Exactly how
> > that is done is not explicitly specified.
> 
> This is also my take. What is done here is not much different than
> refactoring duplicated code so it leaves in a single place:
> 
> - by "value" at the root in COPYING and in the Documentation.
> - by "reference" in the code proper as SPDX ids.
> 
> Therefore essential and common requirements to include the license
> text is fulfilled in the kernel.
> 
> Note that there are a few offenders that will need to clean up their
> acts as they came up will both long and "un-removable and
> un-alterable" crazy legalese blurbs [1] prefix this:
> 
> "DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER"
> 
> These will have to be taken care on a case by case basis. These are
> pretty stupid and IMHO should have never been allowed to be added to
> the kernel in the first place and are ugly warts. It could very well
> be that these are not really GPL-compliant notices FWIW: keeping
> notices and copyrights is quite different from a restriction of
> altering things by moving them around which is exactly what is
> happening with the SPDX-ification here.
> 
> [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/staging/lustre/include/linux/libcfs/libcfs.h?h=v4.15-rc5#n5

Lustre is now owned by Intel so I suspect that some throat clearing
noises in the right direction could easily take care of the issue with
those files....

					- Ted