From: "Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn@ebb.org>
To: linux-spdx@vger.kernel.org, J Lovejoy <opensource@jilayne.com>,
copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>,
tj@kernel.org, gregkh@linuxfoundation.org,
akpm@linux-foundation.org, jeyu@kernel.org, shuah@kernel.org,
bvanassche@acm.org, dan.j.williams@intel.com, joe@perches.com,
keescook@chromium.org, rostedt@goodmis.org, minchan@kernel.org,
linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-block@vger.kernel.org,
linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
Goldwyn Rodrigues <rgoldwyn@suse.com>, Kuno Woudt <kuno@frob.nl>,
Richard Fontana <fontana@sharpeleven.org>,
Ciaran Farrell <Ciaran.Farrell@suse.com>,
Christopher De Nicolo <Christopher.DeNicolo@suse.com>,
Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 1/6] LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license
Date: Wed, 25 May 2022 15:29:20 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Yo6twJ5rqrB/J/rJ@ebb.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <a8c4636b-707c-2563-c521-2455ac08237c@jilayne.com>
J Lovejoy wrote:
> (And to give credit where credit is due, Bradley's input during that
> challenging "negotiation" was very helpful. :)
😊 … thank you!
I'd written today:
>> So, this problem that Thomas notes above is definitely an error by the
>> SPDX project, *just like* the one that exists for the deprecated “GPL-2.0”
J Lovejoy replied:
> To be clear, the GPL-2.0 identifier was never an error by the SPDX team - we
> were always very clear as to what it meant/means.
… but notwithstanding a clear definition of a moniker (which I agree indeed
you've made for most SPDX identifiers), if that definition fails to
adequately match historically understanding (and/or fails to take into
account nuances in the document it represents), confusion ensues for users.
Users *were* confused about “GPL-2.0” (remember, we did a small (admittedly
non-scientific) survey at a session at a conference — FOSDEM I think it was?)
Most SPDX *users* won't speak its defined terms fluently; I suspect most of
Linux's licensors (and even most licensees) don't speak SPDX fluently, so
presumably you want SPDX identifiers to have some intuitiveness —
particularly for the use case of linux-spdx, which requires the identifiers
to be *both* human-readable and machine-readable.
This is relevant to the copyleft-next-0.3.1 identifier. SPDX could define
“copyleft-next-0.3.1” to mean for SPDX purposes: “the text of copyleft-next
without any options in its terms exercised/removed” (— although I note
https://spdx.org/licenses/copyleft-next-0.3.1.html seems to be wholly silent
regarding options exercising/removing). However, there is currently
confusion — shown in the fact that Thomas still asked:
>>>> If I want to remove this option, then how do I express this with a SPDX
>>>> license identifier? Sigh!
… upon noticing this part of copyleft-next:
>>> + Unless I explicitly remove the option of Distributing Covered Works
>>> + under Later Versions, You may Distribute Covered Works under any Later
>>> + Version.
Anyway, I'm pointing out SPDX's shortcomings on this point *not* to
captiously admonish SPDX, but rather to point out that any issues with SPDX
identifiers and their formal definitions shouldn't influence a decision about
what licenses are acceptable for inclusion as dual-license options in Linux.
Plus, I remain hopeful that over the long-term, the SPDX project will take
feedback from efforts like linux-spdx to solve the kinds of problems that
have come up in this thread and others.
Finally, I've already started a sub-thread on the copyleft-next list to start
discussing maybe the license (in future versions) shouldn't have this option
anyway (for unrelated policy reasons). That might yield a side-benefit of
making the problem evaporate entirely for SPDX. (Anyway, after 25 years of
living with GPL's “-or-later vs. -only” mess — I, for one, am convinced new
licenses like copyleft-next should try very hard to not repeat that mistake.)
-- bkuhn
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-05-25 22:43 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-10-29 18:44 [PATCH v9 0/6] test_sysfs: add new selftest for sysfs Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:44 ` [PATCH v9 1/6] LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-23 21:10 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-24 13:59 ` Richard Fontana
2022-05-25 17:10 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-25 19:13 ` Bradley M. Kuhn
2022-05-25 21:50 ` J Lovejoy
2022-05-25 22:29 ` Bradley M. Kuhn [this message]
2022-05-23 21:22 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-25 16:57 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-25 20:51 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-25 23:53 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-23 21:27 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-25 16:43 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-25 17:05 ` Bird, Tim
2022-05-25 18:11 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-25 19:05 ` Bird, Tim
2022-05-25 19:44 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-05-25 22:16 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-06-02 4:11 ` Bird, Tim
2022-06-02 6:20 ` gregkh
2022-06-02 19:41 ` Luis Chamberlain
2022-06-02 19:30 ` Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:44 ` [PATCH v9 2/6] testing: use the copyleft-next-0.3.1 SPDX tag Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:44 ` [PATCH v9 3/6] selftests: add tests_sysfs module Luis Chamberlain
2021-12-03 15:29 ` Greg KH
2021-12-09 1:48 ` Luis Chamberlain
2021-12-10 21:39 ` Luis Chamberlain
2021-12-14 19:31 ` [copyleft-next] " Richard Fontana
2022-05-22 14:37 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-22 14:47 ` Greg KH
2022-05-22 15:06 ` Thomas Gleixner
2022-05-23 19:37 ` Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:44 ` [PATCH v9 4/6] kernfs: add initial failure injection support Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:44 ` [PATCH v9 5/6] test_sysfs: add support to use kernfs failure injection Luis Chamberlain
2021-10-29 18:45 ` [PATCH v9 6/6] kernel/module: add documentation for try_module_get() Luis Chamberlain
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