From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756881AbaFABnK (ORCPT ); Sat, 31 May 2014 21:43:10 -0400 Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([140.211.166.183]:41878 "EHLO smtp.gentoo.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754761AbaFABnG (ORCPT ); Sat, 31 May 2014 21:43:06 -0400 Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 01:43:01 +0000 From: "Robin H. Johnson" To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Licensing & copyright of kernel .config files (defconfig, *config) Message-ID: Reply-To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, robbat2@gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org (Please CC me on replies, not subscribed to LKML) Hi, Somewhat of an odd question, but none of the files in question seem to have a copyright header on them... For a kernel .config file, either from one of the defconfig or any other *config option that automates the answer: 1. What license does the file fall under? 2. Who are the copyright holders? Naively, since the defconfigs are bundled with the kernel, that could fall under GPLv2-only implicitly, but lacking any explicit copyright headers makes this interesting (arch/*/configs/* contain lots of files, no copyright headers on them). If I manually write the names of some configuration options to a new .config file, at that point I logically am the only author and have copyright of it. My editor slaps a default license on it of BSD-2. Thereafter I run olddefconfig, and now it's a combined work of the kernel's defconfig and my manual settings. If GPL-2 was inherited from the kernel tree, this is now a combined BSD-GPL2 work, or is it? The kernel config tools did consider my file as input, possibly overrode the settings if they didn't work with others, and re-output everything. If the files are to be marked with a copyright header, who is the holder of it that it should be attributed to? Alternatively, is this a case where the work is not copyrightable, and the files should have a notice to that effect? Background: Gentoo has a bunch of "stock" kernel configurations for release engineering, our initramfs tool (genkernel), and other endeavors over the years. These projects claim BSD, GPL2, LGPL2 on various pieces, and I don't think they can all be correct. I'm working on getting them into one place, because some of them have been getting stale, but the differing licenses raised a red flag to me. -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Developer, Infrastructure Lead E-Mail : robbat2@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85