From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Return-path: Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2018 20:33:24 -0500 From: William Breathitt Gray To: Guenter Roeck Cc: Aaro Koskinen , Marcus Folkesson , Wim Van Sebroeck , Joel Stanley , Nicolas Ferre , Alexandre Belloni , Florian Fainelli , Ray Jui , Scott Branden , bcm-kernel-feedback-list@broadcom.com, Eric Anholt , Stefan Wahren , Support Opensource , Baruch Siach , Jimmy Vance , Keguang Zhang , Tomas Winkler , Johannes Thumshirn , Carlo Caione , Kevin Hilman , Matthias Brugger , Michal Simek , Vladimir Zapolskiy , Sylvain Lemieux , Kukjin Kim , Krzysztof Kozlowski , Zwane Mwaikambo , Jim Cromie , Barry Song , Patrice Chotard , Maxime Ripard , Chen-Yu Tsai , Marc Gonzalez , Mans Rullgard , Thierry Reding , Jonathan Hunter , Masahiro Yamada , Benjamin Herrenschmidt , Paul Mackerras , Michael Ellerman , Jun Nie , Baoyou Xie , Shawn Guo , linux-watchdog@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Philippe Ombredanne Subject: Re: [PATCH v5] watchdog: add SPDX identifiers for watchdog subsystem Message-ID: <20180305013308.GA11983@sophia> References: <20180301085450.13829-1-marcus.folkesson@gmail.com> <20180304235319.55gulkoxk4vcaoug@darkstar.musicnaut.iki.fi> <9db48467-7727-87b7-5c55-9c53c46a901f@roeck-us.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <9db48467-7727-87b7-5c55-9c53c46a901f@roeck-us.net> List-ID: On Sun, Mar 04, 2018 at 05:11:00PM -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote: >On 03/04/2018 03:53 PM, Aaro Koskinen wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Thu, Mar 01, 2018 at 09:54:50AM +0100, Marcus Folkesson wrote: >>> diff --git a/drivers/watchdog/retu_wdt.c b/drivers/watchdog/retu_wdt.c >>> index 39cd51df2ffc..258dfcf9cbda 100644 >>> --- a/drivers/watchdog/retu_wdt.c >>> +++ b/drivers/watchdog/retu_wdt.c >>> @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@ >>> +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ >> >> Why "+" and not just GPL-2.0? >> > >My non-attorney feedback, which doesn't really mean anything, is that >MODULE_LICENSE says GPL. There appears to be no indication in the file >suggesting that the license would be limited or restricted to GPL v2. > >This makes me wonder if we should drop this patch entirely. I am not an >attorney, and if we start getting into license disputes I rather revert >to doing nothing than getting into trouble by signing off to something >that isn't legally clean. > >Guenter Regardless of the legal aspect of these changes, I believe the ultimate decision to change license text should be handled by the authors of the code. License text is a statement of intention by the authors' for the use of their provided code. A change of license text thus is by its very nature -- even if meant to be compatible -- a change of the authors' intention. Therefore, it would make sense that license text changes should be provided directly from the authors. Rather than seeking ACKs on an encompassing patch such as this, I would suggest that a more appropriate way to get these SPDX changes merged is to request the authors of these pieces of code to submit the relevant license text change patches themselves directly. This would remove the ambiquity of what the authors' intentions actually are, as well as ease the legal fears some have with the current attempt. William Breathitt Gray