Re: WTF? Re: [PATCH] License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license

From: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
To: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
	Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	"Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com>,
	Eric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>,
	xfs <linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: WTF? Re: [PATCH] License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:57:33 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1511647053.2503.22.camel@perches.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20171125191223.GC5114@amd>

On Sat, 2017-11-25 at 20:12 +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> [Linus Torvalds...]
> > Having it be the first line of the file is good, it's obvious, and
> > stands out, which is the point, you want it to, it's a license :)
> 
> What is good about that? License is about the least interesting thing
> about the file. Point of SPDX conversion (see the mail I was replying
> to?) was to make license information _less_ intrusive, not more. Tools
> can find SPDX anywhere in the file for the people that really care.
> 
> That's how it works in U-Boot, which people are using as example of
> reasonable SPDX conversion:
> 
> /*
>  * Copyright (c) 2012 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved.
>  * Copyright (c) 2010-2011 NVIDIA Corporation
>  *  NVIDIA Corporation <www.nvidia.com>
>  *
>  * SPDX-License-ers/ d

> .c:     GPL-2.0+
>  */

fwiw: I agree with Pavel.

My preferred header listing order:

// Simple description/purpose
// Copyright/Author
// License