Re: [Batch 16 patch 01/25] treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 226

["Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <lkml@metux.net>]

On 03.06.19 12:46, Armijn Hemel - Tjaldur Software Governance Solutions
wrote:

<snip>

> Yes, I think they would be. That being said, copyright notices in the
> Linux kernel are horribly out of date/inaccurate and even Git does not
> do a good job of recording these (garbage in, garbage out). Git only has
> a single "Author" field and I know of commits where the commit message
> had two authors listed and the that was added had three authors listed.
> Then there are all kinds of silly tags in the Linux kernel where it is
> absolutely unclear whether or not someone is claiming copyright or not.
> See for examples this article:
> https://www.ifosslr.org/index.php/ifosslr/article/view/121

uh, I didn't expect it to be that complicated :o
I was assuming that Author: and Signed-off-by: would be sufficient.
(okay, we'd need some git-blame counterpart that honors Signed-off-by).

> Also, author doesn't necessarily mean copyright owner, company
> affiliation also does not necessarily mean copyright is with the company
> (it depends on the work contract) and it would require a lot more
> research to find the true copyright owner.
> 
> The copyright statements also have other relevant information, such as
> years. This is relevant to find out which copyright laws were in effect
> when the code was published.

hmm, maybe we should start w/ introducing some rules for that for all
new code ?

Maybe:

Rule 1: If not stated otherwise, the Signed-Off-By indicates the signer
        claims copyright for the added or replaced lines of code.
        This only affect any lines of code that were already present
        (and unchanged) before these rules taking effect.
Rule 2: New files shall have some SPDX-Copyright: header (checkpatch
        should check for that).
Rule 3: If the SPDX-Copyright header is present, all mentioned authors
        claim copyright for the whole file, except for claims from other
        rules.
Rule 4: For existing files, SPDX-Copyright header may be added on a per-
        case basis, when actual copyright claims have been validated.
Rule 5: If the author is transferring his claims to some company, this
        company shall be mentioned in the Signed-Off-By or SPDX-
        Copyright headers.

Certainly, it will take a long time, until everything is really cleared
up, but IMHO a good start, at least for all new code.

> There was a discussion about this a few days ago (please see the list
> archive). Personally I don't see the benefit.

There already have been lawsuits on GPL violations. For such, the actual
copyright holders of the disputed code have be clear.

Personally, I wouldn't spend too much efforts in here, but I'd wish to
have some clear rules for any new contributions (in order to not making
the situation worse as it already is).


--mtx


-- 
Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
info@metux.net -- +49-151-27565287