Re: [PATCH 1/6] include: add SPDX GPL-2.0-only license tags where applicable

[Ahmad Fatoum <a.fatoum@pengutronix.de>]

Hello,

On 11/2/19 11:25, Roland Hieber wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 08, 2019 at 10:09:19AM +0100, Ahmad Fatoum wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 8/2/19 09:59, Roland Hieber wrote:
>>> On Fri, Feb 08, 2019 at 06:48:26AM +0100, Oleksij Rempel wrote:
>>>> Hi Roland,
>>>>
>>>> please remove deprecated license headers in same patch.
>>>
>>> I decided to leave them to record the original author's intent. There
>>> are several variations on the GPL headers in the project, the one
>>> extreme is the full GPL license header including a warranty disclaimer,
>>> but the other extreme is only a "GPLv2" and nothing more. We can decide
>>> on the project level to apply the warranty disclaimer. But by removing
>>> the license headers from individual files, the original author intent is
>>> lost – maybe the didn't want to include the disclaimer, maybe they
>>> didn't care, in any case it is not in our possibility to decide over
>>> their copyright matters and for most of the cases it is too late to
>>> track some of the people down and ask them.
>>>
>>> This all becomes important when someone forks our files to a new
>>> project. And if that someone does not know what the SPDX license tags
>>> actually mean, it's better to have the original documentation on the
>>> file level.
>>>
>>> I noticed that Linux usually removes the license headers and only keeps
>>> the copyright lines, but I wasn't able to find any reason for that. Do
>>> you have more insight here?
>>
>> (Obligatory IANAL)
> 
> (Me neither)
> 
>> With the copyright, the author states their right to deal as they
>> see fit with the source code. For example they may relicense. Replacing the
>> copyright with a SPDX-License-Identifier won't preserve this information.
> 
> That sounds like an argument for leaving the copyright headers in the
> individual files?

Yes, leave copyright/authorship lines, but replace license text with
SPDX-License-Identifier.

> 
>> The license itself grants rights to others and, if it's a standard one,
>> could be referenced by the Identifier, while the full text is reproduced
>> only once at some central location (see my LICENSES directory patch below).
> 
> There are two parts involved when applying the GPL. One part is the GPL
> itself, which is written by the FSF, and is the generic license granting
> rights and duties to users of the program for works that are licensed
> under the GPL.  The second part is the actual copyright statement, which
> is written by the author of the (respective part of the) code, and which
> must mention that a source file is actually licensed under the GPL.
> This part usually, but not always, also contains a warranty disclaimer.
> Although that second part is pre-formulated in the appendix "How to
> Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" of the GPL, it can be seen in my
> patch that the copyright statement historically has several different
> variants, ranging from "this is GPLv2" to the full text that is
> recommended in the GPL appendix (and also in the GPL FAQ [1]). It is the
> author's sole right to choose the exact conditions in the copyright
> statement on the file level, and I think by reducing those license
> headers to only the copyright line transgresses that right. And, as I
> said, the full copyright statement also serves as a fallback in case the
> file is copied to a project that does not use the full SPDX process. I
> also doubt that a single "SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0" line would
> be sufficient to imply everything that is written in the full copyright
> statement for every possible user of the source code.
> 
> I welcome your patch for adding the LICENSES/* files, but I don't think
> it solved the problem mentioned above, as LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0
> also only contains the text of the generic GPL, and not the authors'
> copyright statement.
> 
> [faq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoticeInSourceFile
> 
>  - Roland
> 

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