From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1424148AbdKRLV2 (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 Nov 2017 06:21:28 -0500 Received: from mout02.posteo.de ([185.67.36.66]:48688 "EHLO mout02.posteo.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1424133AbdKRLVU (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 Nov 2017 06:21:20 -0500 Subject: Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers To: Greg KH , Jonathan Corbet Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20171115084541.GA23833@kroah.com> <20171115204411.10292-1-martink@posteo.de> <20171116114110.GA5892@kroah.com> <20171117155353.02950038@lwn.net> <20171118101756.GA8368@kroah.com> From: Martin Kepplinger Message-ID: <454ecadc-b4df-ddd9-d29a-18c64b72d1b7@posteo.de> Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2017 12:21:16 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20171118101756.GA8368@kroah.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 2017-11-18 11:17, Greg KH wrote: > On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 03:53:53PM -0700, Jonathan Corbet wrote: >> On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:41:10 +0100 >> Greg KH wrote: >> >>>> I'll fold this in, in the thread here. I guess this change is what Greg >>>> had in mind? Or would you prefer having including SPDX and removing >>>> permission statement seperately? >>> >>> I have been doing them in 2 steps, but only because the files I modified >>> were in different "chunks" (i.e. add missing SPDX identifiers to a bunch >>> of files in a directory, and then the second patch would remove the >>> license identifiers for all files in that directory). As that type of >>> patch flow doesn't make sense here, I think what you did was just fine. >> >> So I'll confess to being a little worried about removing the boilerplate: >> >> And it's important to notice that while adding a SPDX line should >> not really be controversial (as long as you get the license right, >> of course - Greg&co have the CSV files for everything, in case you >> want to check things you maintain), before removing the >> boiler-plate you really need to feel like you "own" the file. >> — Linus (https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/11/2/715) >> >> Are we sure that we're not going to get in trouble with the people who do >> "own" those files if we rip out the boilerplate? It would be good to have >> some clarity on when that can be done. > > I have discussed this with many lawyers, and as SPDX is acknowledged as > a valid way to specify the license that a file is released under, > removing the "boilerplate" text is just fine according to all of them. > > As a backup to this, I have verification from at the legal department of > at least one very large corporate copyright holder in the kernel that > this is fine with them, and they are glad to see this happen, as now we > will not have 700+ different ways to say "released under the GPL v2" in > the tree. You can see one of the patch series on lkml where I say I got > their approval as proof. > > So yes, this should be fine, but of course, ask the copyright holder of > the file when doing this. I have been cc:ing the owners of the files > when I do this work, and have gotten no objections so far when doing > this work. Ok that's probably important. Even if not strictly necessary, at least when I get acks from all copyright holder, I feel this is safe to do for me or anybody. Thanks. That's annoying work and I appreciate it.