Re: [PATCH v6] checkpatch.pl: Add SPDX license tag check

[Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>]

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On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 2:18 PM, Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>
wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 1:06 PM, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 12:27 -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
>> > On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 9:49 AM, Igor Stoppa <igor.stoppa@huawei.com>
wrote:
>> > > On 02/02/18 17:40, Rob Herring wrote:
>> > > > Add SPDX license tag check based on the rules defined in
>> > >
>> > > Shouldn't it also check that the license is compatible?
>> > >
>> >
>> > Perhaps we shouldn't try to script legal advice.
>>
>> True.
>>
>> I believe what was meant was that the
>> entry was a valid SPDX License entry
>> that already exists as a specific file
>> in the LICENSES/ path.
>>
>> So that entry must be some combination of:
>>
>> $ git ls-files LICENSES/ | cut -f3- -d'/' | sort
>> BSD-2-Clause
>> BSD-3-Clause
>> BSD-3-Clause-Clear
>> GPL-1.0
>> GPL-2.0
>> LGPL-2.0
>> LGPL-2.1
>> Linux-syscall-note
>> MIT
>> MPL-1.1
>>
>> From my perspective, it'd be better if the
>> various + uses had their own individual
>> license files in the LICENSES/ path.
>
>
> At the end of december, the SPDX license list[1] was rev'd to
> Version: 3.0 28 December 2017.   At the request of
> FSF, the GNU license family would not use the "+" notation,
> and would bias towards using "-only" and "-or-later", explicitly.
> So adding both variants to the LICENSES/ path aligns with
> this forward direction.
>
>>
>> Right now, there are many missing licenses
>> that are already used by various existing
>> SPDX-License-Identifier: entries.
>>
>>
>> APACHE-2.0
>> BSD
>> CDDL
>> CDDL-1.0
>> ISC
>> GPL-1.0+
>> GPL-2.0+
>> LGPL-2.1+
>> OpenSSL
>>
>> There are odd entries like:
>>
>> GPL-2.0-only
>
>
> This is the new way to represent GPLv2 only, as described above.
> While the GPL-2.0 and GPL-2.0+ notation is still valid,  it is deprecated
> in the latest version, so transitioning existing over time will probably
> be needed.   So I think the list of licenses to be added to
> LICENSES/ path is:
>
> APACHE-2.0
> BSD
> CDDL

Oops - should not have included CDDL as its not a valid SPDX identifier.
It should be either CDDL-1.0 or CDDL-1.1,  and the place where it was
found needs to be fixed.   See [1] for valid SPDX identifiers.

> CDDL-1.0
> ISC
> GPL-1.0-only
> GPL-1.0-or-later (note: actually same contents as one GPL-1.0-only)
> GPL-2.0-only
> GPL-2.0-or-later (same contents as GPL-2.0-only)
> LGPL-2.0-only
> LGPL-2.0-or-later (same contents as LGPL-2.0-only)
> LGPL-2.1-only
> LGPL-2.1-or-later (same contents as LGPL-2.1-only)
> OpenSSL
>
> Having files with the same contents, but different names is
> irritating, but I can't see a another way of complying with REUSE
> guidelines.   Any better suggestions?
>
>>
>> Parentheses around AND/OR aren't consistent.
>
>
> The SPDX specification has an appendix that calls for "(",")"
> around every license expresssion.   After discussion with some
> developers it was decided to be ok to relax that, and only add them
> when they were essential to clarify the logic.   The next rev of the
> SPDX specification will have this clarified as well.   I think we caught
> most of the changes in the kernel documentation patches for describing
> this,  but if you have specific cases to be reviewed,  happy to have
> a look.
>
> Thanks, Kate
>
>
> [1] https://spdx.org/licenses/

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