[PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[Martin Kepplinger]

A few years ago the FSF moved and "59 Temple Place" is wrong. Having this
still in our source files feels old and unmaintained.

Let's take the license statement serious and not confuse users.

As https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html suggests, we replace the
postal address with "<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>" in the samples
directory.

Signed-off-by: Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de>
---
 samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c | 3 +--
 samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c      | 6 ++----
 samples/connector/cn_test.c             | 3 +--
 samples/connector/ucon.c                | 3 +--
 samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c | 3 +--
 5 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c b/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
index e7823ffb1ca0..fc8b4c6c655f 100644
--- a/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
+++ b/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
@@ -17,8 +17,7 @@
  *  GNU General Public License for more details.
  *
  *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- *  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
+ *  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
  *
  */
 
diff --git a/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c b/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
index 004a4e201476..43810e6c745d 100644
--- a/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
+++ b/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
@@ -15,10 +15,8 @@
  * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
  * General Public License for more details.
  *
- * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
- * License along with this program; if not, write to the
- * Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
- * Boston, MA 021110-1307, USA.
+ * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+ * along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
  *
  * Based on sysfs:
  * 	sysfs is Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003 Patrick Mochel
diff --git a/samples/connector/cn_test.c b/samples/connector/cn_test.c
index 95cd06f4ec1e..48dfe47e65a5 100644
--- a/samples/connector/cn_test.c
+++ b/samples/connector/cn_test.c
@@ -15,8 +15,7 @@
  * GNU General Public License for more details.
  *
  * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
+ * along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
  */
 
 #define pr_fmt(fmt) "cn_test: " fmt
diff --git a/samples/connector/ucon.c b/samples/connector/ucon.c
index 8a4da64e02a8..1943aba7e903 100644
--- a/samples/connector/ucon.c
+++ b/samples/connector/ucon.c
@@ -15,8 +15,7 @@
  * GNU General Public License for more details.
  *
  * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
+ * along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
  */
 
 #include <asm/types.h>
diff --git a/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c b/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
index ef7f32291852..7ff5db0ccfe9 100644
--- a/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
+++ b/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
@@ -12,8 +12,7 @@
  * GNU General Public License for more details.
  *
  * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
+ * along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
  *
  * usage: insmod data_breakpoint.ko ksym=<ksym_name>
  *
-- 
2.11.0

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[Greg KH]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:50:37AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> A few years ago the FSF moved and "59 Temple Place" is wrong. Having this
> still in our source files feels old and unmaintained.
> 
> Let's take the license statement serious and not confuse users.
> 
> As https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html suggests, we replace the
> postal address with "<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>" in the samples
> directory.

What would be best is to just put the SPDX single line at the top of the
files, and then remove this license "boilerplate" entirely.  I've
started to do that with some subsystems already (drivers/usb/ and
drivers/tty/ are almost finished, see Linus's tree for details), and
I've sent out a patch series for drivers/s390/ yesterday if you want to
see an example of how to do it.

Could you do that here instead of this patch as well?

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[Martin Kepplinger]

Am 15.11.2017 07:29 schrieb Greg KH:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:50:37AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
>> A few years ago the FSF moved and "59 Temple Place" is wrong. Having 
>> this
>> still in our source files feels old and unmaintained.
>> 
>> Let's take the license statement serious and not confuse users.
>> 
>> As https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html suggests, we replace 
>> the
>> postal address with "<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>" in the samples
>> directory.
> 
> What would be best is to just put the SPDX single line at the top of 
> the
> files, and then remove this license "boilerplate" entirely.  I've
> started to do that with some subsystems already (drivers/usb/ and
> drivers/tty/ are almost finished, see Linus's tree for details), and
> I've sent out a patch series for drivers/s390/ yesterday if you want to
> see an example of how to do it.
> 
> Could you do that here instead of this patch as well?
> 

Is there consensus about this? I'm not a layer, but is this clear enough 
for
useres? And what holds against only adding the new SPDX tag line at the 
top?

Other than I don't like mixing // and /**/ comments, it indeed looks
quite clean. Is there consensus about the syntax too?

thanks

                                martin

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 08:46:51AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> Am 15.11.2017 07:29 schrieb Greg KH:
> > On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:50:37AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> > > A few years ago the FSF moved and "59 Temple Place" is wrong. Having
> > > this
> > > still in our source files feels old and unmaintained.
> > > 
> > > Let's take the license statement serious and not confuse users.
> > > 
> > > As https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html suggests, we replace
> > > the
> > > postal address with "<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>" in the samples
> > > directory.
> > 
> > What would be best is to just put the SPDX single line at the top of the
> > files, and then remove this license "boilerplate" entirely.  I've
> > started to do that with some subsystems already (drivers/usb/ and
> > drivers/tty/ are almost finished, see Linus's tree for details), and
> > I've sent out a patch series for drivers/s390/ yesterday if you want to
> > see an example of how to do it.
> > 
> > Could you do that here instead of this patch as well?
> > 
> 
> Is there consensus about this? I'm not a layer, but is this clear enough for
> useres? And what holds against only adding the new SPDX tag line at the top?

What do you mean by "adding a new" line?  That would change the license
of the file, so don't do that :)

And yes, a single SPDX line in the file is determined to be a valid
legal mark of the license of the file according to all of the lawyers I
have been working with from lots of different companies.  See the last
s390 patch series for one such example of that.

> Other than I don't like mixing // and /**/ comments, it indeed looks
> quite clean. Is there consensus about the syntax too?

See the patch series from Thomas on lkml for the syntax format, the
"consensus" was driven by Linus :)

thanks,

greg k-h

[PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Martin Kepplinger]

This replaces license permission statements that include a wrong postal
address of the FSF with only SPDX license identifiers; in the samples
directory.

Signed-off-by: Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de>
---

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?

thanks

                               martin


 samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c | 15 +--------------
 samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c      | 16 +---------------
 samples/connector/cn_test.c             | 15 +--------------
 samples/connector/ucon.c                | 16 +---------------
 samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c | 14 +-------------
 5 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 71 deletions(-)

diff --git a/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c b/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
index e7823ffb1ca0..29efbd6ab6c5 100644
--- a/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
+++ b/samples/auxdisplay/cfag12864b-example.c
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
 /*
  *    Filename: cfag12864b-example.c
  *     Version: 0.1.0
@@ -6,20 +7,6 @@
  *
  *      Author: Copyright (C) Miguel Ojeda Sandonis
  *        Date: 2006-10-31
- *
- *  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
- *  published by the Free Software Foundation.
- *
- *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
- *  GNU General Public License for more details.
- *
- *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- *  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
- *
  */
 
 /*
diff --git a/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c b/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
index 004a4e201476..f00720d68fc7 100644
--- a/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
+++ b/samples/configfs/configfs_sample.c
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
 /*
  * vim: noexpandtab ts=8 sts=0 sw=8:
  *
@@ -5,21 +6,6 @@
  *      containing a number of configfs subsystems.  It uses the helper
  *      macros defined by configfs.h
  *
- * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
- * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
- * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
- * version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
- *
- * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
- * General Public License for more details.
- *
- * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
- * License along with this program; if not, write to the
- * Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
- * Boston, MA 021110-1307, USA.
- *
  * Based on sysfs:
  * 	sysfs is Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003 Patrick Mochel
  *
diff --git a/samples/connector/cn_test.c b/samples/connector/cn_test.c
index 95cd06f4ec1e..188259d9fd34 100644
--- a/samples/connector/cn_test.c
+++ b/samples/connector/cn_test.c
@@ -1,22 +1,9 @@
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
 /*
  * 	cn_test.c
  * 
  * 2004+ Copyright (c) Evgeniy Polyakov <zbr@ioremap.net>
  * All rights reserved.
- * 
- * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
- * (at your option) any later version.
- *
- * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
- * GNU General Public License for more details.
- *
- * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
  */
 
 #define pr_fmt(fmt) "cn_test: " fmt
diff --git a/samples/connector/ucon.c b/samples/connector/ucon.c
index 8a4da64e02a8..ef91a24ad9d5 100644
--- a/samples/connector/ucon.c
+++ b/samples/connector/ucon.c
@@ -1,22 +1,8 @@
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
 /*
  * 	ucon.c
  *
  * Copyright (c) 2004+ Evgeniy Polyakov <zbr@ioremap.net>
- *
- *
- * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
- * (at your option) any later version.
- *
- * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
- * GNU General Public License for more details.
- *
- * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
  */
 
 #include <asm/types.h>
diff --git a/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c b/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
index ef7f32291852..c4f458c2fdc4 100644
--- a/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
+++ b/samples/hw_breakpoint/data_breakpoint.c
@@ -1,19 +1,7 @@
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
 /*
  * data_breakpoint.c - Sample HW Breakpoint file to watch kernel data address
  *
- * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
- * (at your option) any later version.
- *
- * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
- * GNU General Public License for more details.
- *
- * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
- * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
  *
  * usage: insmod data_breakpoint.ko ksym=<ksym_name>
  *
-- 
2.11.0

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 09:44:11PM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> This replaces license permission statements that include a wrong postal
> address of the FSF with only SPDX license identifiers; in the samples
> directory.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de>
> ---
> 
> 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.

Nice job.

Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:41:10 +0100
Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> 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

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Martin Kepplinger]

On 2017-11-17 23:53, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:41:10 +0100
> Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> 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

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:43:46 +0100
Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de> wrote:

> 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.

Sigh, it wasn't my intent to get Greg in trouble.

Martin...  please don't blame Greg here.  What's going on (IMO) is that
you've stumbled into something that we have just now begun to figure
out.  We very much *want* to rip out all that boilerplate, but we don't
yet have a consensus on the proper way to do it.  We haven't really even
had the discussion yet.  You've just had the poor luck to wander in at
the wrong time and become part of that discussion.

I'll confess that, when I saw your first patch, it crossed my mind to
answer much like Greg did.  But Greg always gets there first :)

The files that you are touching mostly have listed copyright holders in
them.  Should you feel like putting a bit more energy into this, one
thing to do could be to copy them on a new posting of the patch and ask
for acks.  Assuming you get them, we should be able to clean up a bit of
cruft in a way that's clearly supported by the copyright holders.

Thanks,

jon

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Martin Kepplinger]

On 2017-11-18 01:13, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:43:46 +0100
> Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de> wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Sigh, it wasn't my intent to get Greg in trouble.
> 
> Martin...  please don't blame Greg here.  What's going on (IMO) is that
> you've stumbled into something that we have just now begun to figure
> out.  We very much *want* to rip out all that boilerplate, but we don't
> yet have a consensus on the proper way to do it.  We haven't really even
> had the discussion yet.  You've just had the poor luck to wander in at
> the wrong time and become part of that discussion.
> 
> I'll confess that, when I saw your first patch, it crossed my mind to
> answer much like Greg did.  But Greg always gets there first :)
> 

Alright, noone is in trouble already I hope. Maybe I was a little harsh;
sorry Greg. I know less about law than about programming which might
have made me a little nervous here; In the end I want things to work for
Linux.

> The files that you are touching mostly have listed copyright holders in
> them.  Should you feel like putting a bit more energy into this, one
> thing to do could be to copy them on a new posting of the patch and ask
> for acks.  Assuming you get them, we should be able to clean up a bit of
> cruft in a way that's clearly supported by the copyright holders.
> 

Makes sense. Thanks for clearing this up a bit! So as fixing your "own"
files is easier, I'll do that first :)

                         martin

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Greg KH]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:43:46AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> 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.

Please see my response to Jon about this.  I am giving advice that I
have gotten from people I trust to wish to see Linux succeed in a
legally compliant way with all copyright and license laws.

> just saying because it'd be nice to rely on things you say :)

I want to have people rely on it as well, if I'm ever saying anything
that seems contrary to what anyone feels is good for the long-term
success of Linux, please let me know.

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Greg KH]

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 03:53:53PM -0700, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:41:10 +0100
> Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> 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.

If anyone does object to this change, that's ok too.  I'll be glad not
to merge the patch that does this.  Which is why I have been splitting
the add-spdx and remove-boilerplate patches apart as they are two
different actions.

And if anyone wants me to talk to their lawyers about this, I'm more
than willing to do so, as for some reason I end up being the one doing
this a lot these days...

Hope this helps explain things better,

greg k-h

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Martin Kepplinger]

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 <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> 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.

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers

[Philippe Ombredanne]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 9:44 PM, Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de> wrote:
> This replaces license permission statements that include a wrong postal
> address of the FSF with only SPDX license identifiers; in the samples
> directory.
>
> Signed-off-by: Martin Kepplinger <martink@posteo.de>

FWIW, looking all good to me!

Reviewed-by: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com>

-- 
Cordially
Philippe Ombredanne

Re: [PATCH] samples: replace FSF address with web source in license notices

[Pavel Machek]

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On Wed 2017-11-15 09:45:41, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 08:46:51AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> > Am 15.11.2017 07:29 schrieb Greg KH:
> > > On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 10:50:37AM +0100, Martin Kepplinger wrote:
> > > > A few years ago the FSF moved and "59 Temple Place" is wrong. Having
> > > > this
> > > > still in our source files feels old and unmaintained.
> > > > 
> > > > Let's take the license statement serious and not confuse users.
> > > > 
> > > > As https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html suggests, we replace
> > > > the
> > > > postal address with "<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>" in the samples
> > > > directory.
> > > 
> > > What would be best is to just put the SPDX single line at the top of the
> > > files, and then remove this license "boilerplate" entirely.  I've
> > > started to do that with some subsystems already (drivers/usb/ and
> > > drivers/tty/ are almost finished, see Linus's tree for details), and
> > > I've sent out a patch series for drivers/s390/ yesterday if you want to
> > > see an example of how to do it.
> > > 
> > > Could you do that here instead of this patch as well?
> > > 
> > 
> > Is there consensus about this? I'm not a layer, but is this clear enough for
> > useres? And what holds against only adding the new SPDX tag line at the top?
> 
> What do you mean by "adding a new" line?  That would change the license
> of the file, so don't do that :)
> 
> And yes, a single SPDX line in the file is determined to be a valid
> legal mark of the license of the file according to all of the lawyers I
> have been working with from lots of different companies.  See the last
> s390 patch series for one such example of that.
> 
> > Other than I don't like mixing // and /**/ comments, it indeed looks
> > quite clean. Is there consensus about the syntax too?
> 
> See the patch series from Thomas on lkml for the syntax format, the
> "consensus" was driven by Linus :)

Linus is simply wrong here. SPDX at first line of file looks extremely
ugly, and basically negates most of the SPDX advantages. I'm sure
Linus will accept replacing the license text with SPDX (so no // crap
at the first line of file), which should look way better, and is what
U-Boot does.

									Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

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