From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B71B3C56201 for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:11:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E7CA2076E for ; Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:11:40 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: mail.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=infradead.org header.i=@infradead.org header.b="cM01k4eK" Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S2387439AbgKXMLT (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 Nov 2020 07:11:19 -0500 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:49940 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1729173AbgKXMLT (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 Nov 2020 07:11:19 -0500 Received: from casper.infradead.org (casper.infradead.org [IPv6:2001:8b0:10b:1236::1]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 00C5FC0613D6; Tue, 24 Nov 2020 04:11:18 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=infradead.org; s=casper.20170209; h=In-Reply-To:Content-Type:MIME-Version: References:Message-ID:Subject:Cc:To:From:Date:Sender:Reply-To: Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description; bh=0snAvb5DOf+oPMchsCEyUIU/3RDtclpkTrApuWx5x1w=; b=cM01k4eKrSZ1mFMoilnZWF+zm3 AvkPQ8IXi5lb0AqfaKPACXJH5QGsEUDKUlx9rQqMare2QscEbYFINvjV3RstjDHldXXZ8X+a33e04 8VB/uB0teuTiN/iDL1jAgnn9dhOdbi9clxK+cA973oz7OGYADzkC4zqVMk9PbogOnJ1cEMnmAKZ58 6QKTd5+nWr4diAEMBEC8yTzsmYuBVwAmrYhriaVUmX9/3eh6QBIeHSVFhQ0OHDLDcKOA5ZMWVqxoJ G6N5RxYVI1O4iIzvM9h6IxGrIVEDW2LopW5W8kbTUNzkcKAvDW/q505V8tSrogaYT59/VFaJEzKEg X14JMrSg==; Received: from willy by casper.infradead.org with local (Exim 4.92.3 #3 (Red Hat Linux)) id 1khXA5-0001k0-Qp; Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:11:10 +0000 Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:11:09 +0000 From: Matthew Wilcox To: Thorsten Leemhuis Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Jonathan Corbet , Randy Dunlap , Greg Kroah-Hartman , linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Thomas Gleixner Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] LICENSES: Add the CC-BY-4.0 license Message-ID: <20201124121109.GY4327@casper.infradead.org> References: <20201124091852.GB11695@lst.de> <04eae024-811d-d11e-b8bd-52f0dd0e225f@leemhuis.info> <20201124093658.GA13174@lst.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 11:07:41AM +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: > There is nothing special with this text, it's just that GPL is known to not > be really ideal for documentation. That makes it hard for people to reuse > parts of the docs outside of the kernel context, say in books or on > websites. But it IMHO would be good for us if others could simply use this > text as a base in such places. Otherwise they'd often face a situation where > they had to write something completely new themselves, which afsics often > leads to texts that can be incomplete, inaccurate or actually missleading. > That can lead to bad bug reports, which is annoying both for reporters and > kernel developers. > > That's why I came up with the thought "make the text available under more > liberal license in addition to the GPLv2 is a good idea here". I considered > MIT, but from what I see CC-BY 4.0 is a way better choice for documentation > that is more known to authors. > > And I hope others pick up the idea when they write new documentation for the > kernel, so maybe sooner or later it's not unusual anymore. It's really tricky to make this work when, eg, including kernel-doc from files which are unambiguously licensed under the GPL. I'd be happy to sign up to licensing the files I control under GPL-with-CC-BY-SA-exception that said something like "any documentation extracted from this file may be distributed under the BY-SA license", but I'm not sure everybody would.