efficacy of MODULE_LICENSE

[J Lovejoy <opensource@jilayne.com>]

Hi all,

We seem to have gone a bit quiet recently! Hopefully that’s just a symptom of nicer weather and holiday season, but we can still pick up some momentum :)

I wanted to get your input on the MODULE_LICENSE tag, which I have found to be a bit vexing in some instances. I am finding examples where there is a clearly identifiable license in the file, for example ISC, and then the MODULE_LICENSE tag is something like "Dual BSD/GPL”. There is absolutely no other reference to GPL whatsoever (or any BSD variant for that matter).

Based on my understanding of https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/include/linux/module.h#n172 <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/include/linux/module.h#n172> - the MODULE_LICENSE info was never meant to be definitive license info, but seemingly more of an approximation.  I’m wondering if others have a different view?

More specifically - where we have specific license match (like the example above) - we can add the appropriate SPDX identifier, but if we leave the MODULE_LICENSE info, I suspect that scanners will pick that up and report a mix of licensing info (e.g., ISC, BSD, GPL, as in my above example), which kind of brings us to the same place we are now. Should we also remove the MODULE_LICENSE tag where it contradicts the actual license info in terms of an exact license match (i.e., there is nothing to match to GPL here, other than the MODULE_LICENSE tag, but there is an exact match to a different license, ISC, in this case).


Thanks,
Jilayne