[U-Boot] [PATCH] Licenses: Re-add introduction to README, add Exceptions file

Tom Rini trini at ti.com
Wed Jul 24 15:14:45 CEST 2013


From: Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de>

The Licenses/Exceptions file describes the standalone license exception.
Add back our long-standing introductory remarks to Licenses/README and
fix a few spelling problems

Signed-off-by: Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de>
[trini: Grab differences between v1 and v3, apply separately, to avoid a
new branch on Wolfgang's side]
Signed-off-by: Tom Rini <trini at ti.com>
---
 Licenses/Exceptions |   15 +++++++++++++++
 Licenses/README     |   32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
 2 files changed, 42 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 Licenses/Exceptions

diff --git a/Licenses/Exceptions b/Licenses/Exceptions
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9b3cd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Licenses/Exceptions
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+
+GPL License Exception:
+
+Even though U-Boot in general is covered by the GPL-2.0/GPL-2.0+,
+this does *not* cover the so-called "standalone" applications that
+use U-Boot services by means of the jump table provided by U-Boot
+exactly for this purpose - this is merely considered normal use of
+U-Boot, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
+
+  The header files "include/image.h" and "arch/*/include/asm/u-boot.h"
+define interfaces to U-Boot.  Including these (unmodified) header
+files in another file is considered normal use of U-Boot, and does
+*not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
+-- Wolfgang Denk
+
diff --git a/Licenses/README b/Licenses/README
index 68830b9..b1a59cc 100644
--- a/Licenses/README
+++ b/Licenses/README
@@ -1,21 +1,43 @@
+  U-Boot is Free Software.  It is copyrighted by Wolfgang Denk and
+many others who contributed code (see the actual source code and the
+git commit messages for details).  You can redistribute U-Boot and/or
+modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public
+License as published by the Free Software Foundation.  Most of it can
+also be distributed, at your option, under any later version of the
+GNU General Public License -- see individual files for exceptions.
+
+  NOTE! This license does *not* cover the so-called "standalone"
+applications that use U-Boot services by means of the jump table
+provided by U-Boot exactly for this purpose - this is merely
+considered normal use of U-Boot, and does *not* fall under the
+heading of "derived work" -- see file  Licenses/Exceptions  for
+details.
+
+  Also note that the GPL and the other licenses are copyrighted by
+the Free Software Foundation and other organizations, but the
+instance of code that they refer to (the U-Boot source code) is
+copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.
+-- Wolfgang Denk
+
 
 Like many other projects, U-Boot has a tradition of including big
 blocks of License headers in all files.  This not only blows up the
 source code with mostly redundant information, but also makes it very
 difficult to generate License Clearing Reports.  An additional problem
-is that even the same linces are referred to by a number of slightly
-varying text blocks (full, abbreviated, with obsolted / older address
+is that even the same licenses are referred to by a number of
+slightly varying text blocks (full, abbreviated, different
+indentation, line wrapping and/or white space, with obsolete address
 information, ...) which makes automatic processing a nightmare.
 
 To make this easier, such license headers in the source files will be
-replaced with a single line reference to Unique Lincense Identifiers
+replaced with a single line reference to Unique License Identifiers
 as defined by the Linux Foundation's SPDX project [1].  For example,
-in a C source the full "GPL v2.0 or later" header text can now be
+in a source file the full "GPL v2.0 or later" header text will be
 replaced by a single line:
 
 	SPDX-License-Identifier:	GPL-2.0+
 
-We use the SPDX Unique Lincense Identifiers here; these are available
+We use the SPDX Unique License Identifiers here; these are available
 at [2].
 
 [1] http://spdx.org/
-- 
1.7.9.5



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