linux-kernel - Re: SPDX-License-Identifier

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Date:	Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:12:53 +0100
From:	Michal Simek <monstr@...str.eu>
To:	Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Felipe Balbi <balbi@...com>,
	Subbaraya Sundeep Bhatta <subbaraya.sundeep.bhatta@...inx.com>,
	linux-usb@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Subbaraya Sundeep Bhatta <sbhatta@...inx.com>,
	devicetree@...r.kernel.org, Wolfgang Denk <wd@...x.de>
Subject: Re: SPDX-License-Identifier

On 02/21/2014 08:01 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 09:57:20AM -0800, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>>> But shouldn't we at least write somewhere
>>> that it has connection to spdx.org where you can find out that licenses.
>>
>> Why?  Are these licenses so unknown that no one knows what they are?
>> And, as part of the kernel-as-a-whole-work, they all resolve to GPLv2
>> anyway, and we have that license in the source tree, so nothing else
>> should be needed.
> 
> Note that not all lawyers are in agreement about this, so if this is a
> driver being developed by a company, you may want to ask your
> corporate counsel if they have an opinion about this.  I've received
> advice of the form that it's not obvious that regardless of whether or
> not us *engineers* understand what all of the licensing terms mean,
> what's important is whether someone who is accused of "borrowing"
> GPL'ed code and dropping it in a driver for some other OS can convince
> a judge whether or not it's considered "obvious" from a legal
> perspective what an SPDX header means, and what is implied by an SPDX
> license identifer.
> 
> Also note that with the advent of web sites that allow people to do
> web searches and turn up a singleton file via some gitweb interface,
> the fact that the full license text is distributed alongside the
> tarball might or might have as much legal significance as it once had.
> 
> But of course, I'm not a lawyer, and if your company has is paying for
> the development of the driver, the Golden Rule applies (he who has the
> Gold, makes the Rules), and each of our respective corporate lawyers
> may have different opinions about what might happen if the question
> was ever to be adjudicated in court.

Thanks Ted.
Aren't all these points already answered by SPDX project?
I believe that they should know how this should be handled properly.

Thanks,
Michal

-- 
Michal Simek, Ing. (M.Eng), OpenPGP -> KeyID: FE3D1F91
w: www.monstr.eu p: +42-0-721842854
Maintainer of Linux kernel - Microblaze cpu - http://www.monstr.eu/fdt/
Maintainer of Linux kernel - Xilinx Zynq ARM architecture
Microblaze U-BOOT custodian and responsible for u-boot arm zynq platform



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