Re: Meta-question on GPL compliance of this activity

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 01:58:04PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> I was at the LLW event in Barcelona last month but unfortunately did
> not attend the workshop relating to this activity, so I apologize if
> this is something that has already been considered.
> 
> GPLv2 section 1 says: "You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of
> the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided
> that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an
> appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact
> all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any
> warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this
> License along with the Program."
> 
> I have recently heard the argument that replacing a more or less
> standard old-school GNU license notice, or any sort of nonstandard
> pre-SPDX alternative human-oriented notice, with an SPDX license
> identifier string, without explicit permission from the copyright
> holder, complies with this condition, because in substance the SPDX
> string embodies equivalent licensing information (and has benefits of
> its own over the old-school notice). However, more conservative
> interpreters of GPLv2, including some copyright holders, might argue
> otherwise.

Wonderful, let's debate that with any copyright holder who argues
otherwise.  Right now, we have all companies and developers who have
seen these lines removed in their files, agree with the removal of the
text.  If there are any objections, we will gladly leave their files
alone.

Note, we can trivially change back any such file if someone objects in
the future as well.  Remember, we have the whole history of "the world"
at our fingertips here, nothing we do is ever immutable.

thanks,

greg k-h