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

[Roland Hieber <rhi@pengutronix.de>]

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?

> 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

-- 
Roland Hieber                     | r.hieber@pengutronix.de     |
Pengutronix e.K.                  | https://www.pengutronix.de/ |
Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim | Phone: +49-5121-206917-5086 |
Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686  | Fax:   +49-5121-206917-5555 |

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