From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752992Ab2LEMTq (ORCPT ); Wed, 5 Dec 2012 07:19:46 -0500 Received: from mail-ea0-f174.google.com ([209.85.215.174]:53924 "EHLO mail-ea0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750803Ab2LEMTo (ORCPT ); Wed, 5 Dec 2012 07:19:44 -0500 From: Federico Vaga To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab , Pawel Osciak , Marek Szyprowski , Hans Verkuil , Giancarlo Asnaghi , linux-media@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jonathan Corbet Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 3/4] sta2x11_vip: convert to videobuf2 and control framework Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:24:20 +0100 Message-ID: <2637992.xolQO8ly5c@harkonnen> User-Agent: KMail/4.9.3 (Linux/3.6.8-2.fc17.x86_64; KDE/4.9.3; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: <50BF315C.8090203@redhat.com> References: <1348484332-8106-1-git-send-email-federico.vaga@gmail.com> <8113379.Pqy1l62Utl@number-5> <50BF315C.8090203@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Thank you Mauro for the good explanation > Yeah, there are many changes there that justifies adding you at its > authorship, and that's ok. Also, anyone saying the size of your patch > will recognize your and ST efforts to improve the driver. > > However, as some parts of the code were preserved, dropping the old > authors doesn't sound right (and can even be illegal, in the light > of the GPL license). It would be ok, though, if you would be > changing it to something like: > > Copyright (c) 2010 by ... > or > Original driver from ... Ok, I understand. I will write something like this. * Copyright (C) 2012 ST Microelectronics * author: Federico Vaga * Copyright (C) 2010 WindRiver Systems, Inc. * authors: Andreas Kies * Vlad Lungu > The only way of not preserving the original authors here were if you > start from scratch, without looking at the original code (and you can > somehow, be able to proof it), otherwise, the code will be fit as a > "derivative work", in the light of GPL, and should be preserving the > original authorship. > > Something started from scratch like that will hardly be accepted upstream, > as regressions will likely be introduced, and previously supported > hardware/features may be lost in the process. I understand > Of course the original author can abdicate to his rights of keeping his > name on it. Yet, even if he opt/accept to not keep his name explicitly > there, his copyrights are preserved, with the help of the git history. > > That's said, no single kernel developer/company has full copyrights on > any part of the Kernel, as their code are based on someone else's work. > For example, all Kernel drivers depend on drivers/base, with in turn, > depends on memory management, generic helper functions, arch code, etc. yeah I know :) > So, IMHO, there's not much point on dropping authorship messages. So the MODULE_AUTHOR will be Windriver forever until they drop authorship? Also if in the next future 0 windriver lines will be in the code? (general talking, not about this driver) If I do git blame on a driver with MODULE_AUTHOR("Mr. X"); but only the MODULE_AUTHOR line is from Mr X; there is not an automatically system which remove the MODULE_AUTHOR? Ok, probably it was the original author of the code and the comment header with the copyright history gives to Mr X all the honours, but there is nothing from him in the code. It is not better to remove MODULE_AUTHOR or replace it with who wrotes most of the code? I know that this is not the best place to talk about this, just a little curiosity -- Federico Vaga