From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161270AbdKQXn7 (ORCPT ); Fri, 17 Nov 2017 18:43:59 -0500 Received: from mout02.posteo.de ([185.67.36.66]:59183 "EHLO mout02.posteo.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1423310AbdKQXnv (ORCPT ); Fri, 17 Nov 2017 18:43:51 -0500 Subject: Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers To: Jonathan Corbet , Greg KH Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: 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> From: Martin Kepplinger Message-ID: <5d5da06a-5c20-4031-9b71-9a6b6ef91cef@posteo.de> Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:43:46 +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: <20171117155353.02950038@lwn.net> 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 2017-11-17 23:53, 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. > > Thanks, > > jon > Greg, I assume you are well aware that I initially simply wanted to correct an actual mistake in the permission statements with my proposed changed. I asked whether you know about any consesus met before doing something like removing people's permission statements. That's because the FSF's "reuse" project pushing SPDX, for example says "Don't remove any license texts", see https://reuse.software/practices/ and "Don’t remove existing headers, but only add to them." It may well be that that's not the all there's to it and that there's other ways. But Greg, people are listening to you. Please don't give advice in directions that are not clearly correct for Linux. You know you could have simply ack'd the initial mistake-fix in that case. It wouldn't have hurt anybody. just saying because it'd be nice to rely on things you say :) thanks martin