From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1761354AbYEFQV7 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 May 2008 12:21:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932081AbYEFQVo (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 May 2008 12:21:44 -0400 Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.187]:57713 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932147AbYEFQVn convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 May 2008 12:21:43 -0400 From: Arnd Bergmann To: monstr@seznam.cz Subject: Re: [PATCH 45/56] microblaze_v2: headers simple files - empty or redirect to asm-generic Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 18:21:13 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.9 Cc: Stephen Rothwell , John Williams , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, stephen.neuendorffer@xilinx.com, John.Linn@xilinx.com, matthew@wil.cx, will.newton@gmail.com, drepper@redhat.com, microblaze-uclinux@itee.uq.edu.au, grant.likely@secretlab.ca References: <1209901305-6404-1-git-send-email-monstr@seznam.cz> <20080507004702.d516a727.sfr@canb.auug.org.au> <482077FE.7080201@seznam.cz> In-Reply-To: <482077FE.7080201@seznam.cz> X-Face: I@=L^?./?$U,EK.)V[4*>`zSqm0>65YtkOe>TFD'!aw?7OVv#~5xd\s,[~w]-J!)|%=]>=?utf-8?q?+=0A=09=7EohchhkRGW=3F=7C6=5FqTmkd=5Ft=3FLZC=23Q-=60=2E=60Y=2Ea=5E?= =?utf-8?q?3zb?=) =?utf-8?q?+U-JVN=5DWT=25cw=23=5BYo0=267C=26bL12wWGlZi=0A=09=7EJ=3B=5Cwg?= =?utf-8?q?=3B3zRnz?=,J"CT_)=\H'1/{?SR7GDu?WIopm.HaBG=QYj"NZD_[zrM\Gip^U MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-2" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200805061821.14391.arnd@arndb.de> X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1+Nt0a4oyfFowlgSox3N9iXaVVOQckBD6sdOSP 2NUvLXJJPS1P7v2jHPGO1Y47en3LJXwP4S2Wdyuj40o1fVAVrB Ag0r+EKRgMGnk6iy8e/dw== Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tuesday 06 May 2008, Michal Simek wrote: > > > Absolutely, but is it really necessary to have 14-16 lines of comment > > (including a copyright notice) for a file whose single real line is just > > to include another file?  i.e. reduce all these to 1 line files. > > Can I do it? I think every file need license. If you want a good answer on that, ask your lawyer. In general, every file comes with a 'license' (GPLv2) and 'copyright' (you or the person you copied from) even if you don't put either statement in the file. Files smaller than some 10 lines are usually not considered to be covered by copyright, even if you have the statement in there. Most files nowadays are written by large corporations that have strict rules about what you must put in there to protect their intellectual property. It's certainly safe to leave out the file names from the comments, they don't add any value at all. Similarly, you should easily be able to leave out the license statement, unless you are under a contract that forces you to leave them present. Most people here will be happier if you remove the license statements. The most tricky one part is the copyright statement ("Copyright 2012 Big Corporation of America"), which you strictly speaking should never remove from a file unless you have permission from the copyright holder. Many of your files in your patch set are obviously copies of existing kernel files, with the original copyright notice replaced with "Atmark Techno, inc.". You can draw your own conclusions from that ;-) Obviously, I am not a lawyer, so don't consider this as legal advice. I really hope this doesn't turn into a flamewar, as discussions on intellectual property sometimes do. Arnd <><