Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:02:48 +0100 | From | devzero@web ... | Subject | Re: how much license information inside the kernel ? |
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> devzero@web.de wrote: > > hi, > > > > i found that there is a LOT of repeating licensing information in the > > kernel. > > > > for me, > > > > find ./linux-2.6.27 -type f -exec cat {} \; |egrep "free software|GNU > > General Public License|Free Software Foundation|version 2 of the > > License|distributed in the hope|WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY|FITNESS FOR A > > PARTICULAR" > > > > gives a file sized ~3.5M > > > > That`s more than 1% of the kernel source. > > > > What about the idea to shorten that licening information to a minimum > > , e.g. by shrinking that to a single, catchy line , linking to a > > special licensing file like COPYING or linking to the FSF website ? > > > > please no flames, i know this idea could be pure dynamite for some > > people - but i thought 3.5M is worth this mail. > > > > regards roland > > > > ps: i`m not sure if that has been discussed already, but i didn`t > > find that in the archive. please ignore, otherwise. > > It may be 3.5 MB uncompressed, but disk space is cheap, and repeated > strings compress extremely well to save bandwidth. If you work with the > kernel source enough for this to be an issue, you should use git. > You'll download these license headers once, and never again unless the > copyright info gets changed by a patch. From a technical perspective, > the problem isn't nearly as bad as it looks, and it keeps the lawyers > happy, so it's really not worth messing with. There's plenty of > lower-hanging fruit in unifying drivers for similar hardware, unifying > 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, and other things that make the code > more maintainable. > > -- Chris >
yes, convinced - itŽs not worth the work to clean that up. ________________________________________________________________________ Schon gehört? Bei WEB.DE gibt' s viele kostenlose Spiele: http://games.entertainment.web.de/de/entertainment/games/free/index.html
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