Re: [Batch 8 patch 15/23] treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 166

From: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>, linux-spdx@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Batch 8 patch 15/23] treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 166
Date: Mon, 27 May 2019 15:51:04 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20190527135104.GA6905@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC1cPGzBsUDdcswQPp9STA3ZBK3XmC7fMe7WhF7DQ3qmKxZGTg@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 09:37:50AM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 5:53 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> >
> > From: Thomas Gleixner tglx@linutronix.de
> >
> > Based on 1 normalized pattern(s):
> >
> >   licensed under the terms of the gnu gpl license version 2
> >
> > extracted by the scancode license scanner the SPDX license identifier
> >
> >   GPL-2.0-only
> >
> > has been chosen to replace the boilerplate/reference in 62 file(s).
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
> 
> [...]
> 
> > --- a/tools/testing/ktest/config-bisect.pl
> > +++ b/tools/testing/ktest/config-bisect.pl
> > @@ -1,10 +1,9 @@
> >  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> > +# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
> >  #
> >  # Copyright 2015 - Steven Rostedt, Red Hat Inc.
> >  # Copyright 2017 - Steven Rostedt, VMware, Inc.
> >  #
> > -# Licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL License version 2
> > -#
> 
> To the extent there are Red Hat copyrights, those can be treated as
> GPL-2.0-or-later, if that is desired.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > --- a/tools/testing/ktest/ktest.pl
> > +++ b/tools/testing/ktest/ktest.pl
> > @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
> >  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> > +# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
> >  #
> >  # Copyright 2010 - Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>, Red Hat Inc.
> > -# Licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL License version 2
> >  #
> 
> Red Hat copyrights can be treated as GPL-2.0-or-later, if that is desired.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > --- a/tools/testing/selftests/breakpoints/breakpoint_test.c
> > +++ b/tools/testing/selftests/breakpoints/breakpoint_test.c
> > @@ -1,8 +1,7 @@
> > +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
> >  /*
> >   * Copyright (C) 2011 Red Hat, Inc., Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@redhat.com>
> >   *
> > - * Licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL License version 2
> > - *
> >   * Selftests for breakpoints (and more generally the do_debug() path) in x86.
> >   */
> 
> Red Hat copyrights can be treated as GPL-2.0-or-later, if that is desired.
> 
> [...]

Are you sure you can do that?  If the code was based on a work that was
from GPL-2.0-only you can't, right?  :)

Please, let's not get into the "oh, you can change the license of all
files from company X" business with regards to these semi-automated
conversions.  That's just going to add work and make things more
complex.

Feel free to relicense your company's files at a later point in time,
just submit a patch to the kernel like any other developer :)

thanks,

greg k-h