Re: Licensing example programs in man-pages (was [PATCH v3] ioctl_tty.2: Add example how to get or set baudrate on the serial port)

From: "Pali Rohár" <pali@kernel.org>
To: "Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)" <alx.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: "Greg Kroah-Hartman" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	"Michael Kerrisk" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
	"Marek Behún" <kabel@kernel.org>,
	libc-alpha@sourceware.org,
	"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>,
	linux-man@vger.kernel.org, linux-serial@vger.kernel.org,
	"Walter Harms" <wharms@bfs.de>, "Andres Brouwer" <aeb@cwi.nl>
Subject: Re: Licensing example programs in man-pages (was [PATCH v3] ioctl_tty.2: Add example how to get or set baudrate on the serial port)
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2021 10:32:28 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210806083228.vja7jqnophuomg73@pali> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <40ed8a18-cf49-f807-9227-201e994e9a5a@gmail.com>

On Friday 06 August 2021 09:22:59 Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> Hi Greg, Pali,
> 
> Hi GregOn 8/5/21 7:54 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > What is the license of this page?
> > > 
> > > .../linux/man-pages$ head -n8 man2/ioctl_tty.2
> > > .\" Copyright 2002 Walter Harms <walter.harms@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
> > > .\" and Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>.
> > > .\"
> > > .\" %%%LICENSE_START(GPL_NOVERSION_ONELINE)
> > > .\" Distributed under GPL
> > 
> > What version of GPL?
> 
> I don't know :/
> Maybe v1...
> 
> > 
> > > .\" %%%LICENSE_END
> > > .\"
> > > .TH IOCTL_TTY 2 2021-03-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
> > > 
> > > I'm don't know what GPL_NOVERSION_ONLINE is at all.
> > 
> > I would recommend adding proper SPDX markings to all of these files.
> > Even better, work to make the whole repo REUSE compliant which means
> > that there is no ambuiguity here.
> > 
> 
> Agree.  If Michael has no problems with that, I'll add it to my TODO list.
> 
> > But, the above license does not show up on the code in the original
> > example here, and that needs to be present if anyone wants this to be
> > used.
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > 
> > > Still, if the code is going to have a different license than the rest of the
> > > page, it could perfectly have an SPDX comment in the first line of the
> > > example program.
> > 
> > Even if it is different, it should still be present as no one can see
> > the license of a man page "easily" when reading the documentation
> > through normal tools.
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > 
> > thanks,
> > 
> > greg k-h
> > 
> 
> Pali,
> 
> If you want to specify a specific license for your code, add 2 SPDX lines
> according to REUSE <https://reuse.software/>.  If not, I'll assume that you
> don't care, and when I fix the pages to show the license (which in this case
> I'm not sure which one will be, maybe GPLv1) your code will use that same
> license.  I'll take care of any necessary adjustments such as providing  the
> license text in the repository; you don't need to do that.

Just do not complicate it and use same license as for other manpages or
examples.

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alex
> 
> 
> -- 
> Alejandro Colomar
> Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
> http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/