Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [PATCH] samples: replace outdated permission statement with SPDX identifiers | From | Martin Kepplinger <> | Date | Sat, 18 Nov 2017 12:21:16 +0100 |
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On 2017-11-18 11:17, Greg KH wrote: > On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 03:53:53PM -0700, Jonathan Corbet wrote: >> On Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:41:10 +0100 >> Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >> >>>> I'll fold this in, in the thread here. I guess this change is what Greg >>>> had in mind? Or would you prefer having including SPDX and removing >>>> permission statement seperately? >>> >>> I have been doing them in 2 steps, but only because the files I modified >>> were in different "chunks" (i.e. add missing SPDX identifiers to a bunch >>> of files in a directory, and then the second patch would remove the >>> license identifiers for all files in that directory). As that type of >>> patch flow doesn't make sense here, I think what you did was just fine. >> >> So I'll confess to being a little worried about removing the boilerplate: >> >> And it's important to notice that while adding a SPDX line should >> not really be controversial (as long as you get the license right, >> of course - Greg&co have the CSV files for everything, in case you >> want to check things you maintain), before removing the >> boiler-plate you really need to feel like you "own" the file. >> — Linus (https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/11/2/715) >> >> Are we sure that we're not going to get in trouble with the people who do >> "own" those files if we rip out the boilerplate? It would be good to have >> some clarity on when that can be done. > > I have discussed this with many lawyers, and as SPDX is acknowledged as > a valid way to specify the license that a file is released under, > removing the "boilerplate" text is just fine according to all of them. > > As a backup to this, I have verification from at the legal department of > at least one very large corporate copyright holder in the kernel that > this is fine with them, and they are glad to see this happen, as now we > will not have 700+ different ways to say "released under the GPL v2" in > the tree. You can see one of the patch series on lkml where I say I got > their approval as proof. > > So yes, this should be fine, but of course, ask the copyright holder of > the file when doing this. I have been cc:ing the owners of the files > when I do this work, and have gotten no objections so far when doing > this work.
Ok that's probably important. Even if not strictly necessary, at least when I get acks from all copyright holder, I feel this is safe to do for me or anybody.
Thanks. That's annoying work and I appreciate it.
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