[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/5] Introducing SPDX-License-Identifiers

[Tom Rini]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 09:37:36AM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> 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 lincenses 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
> as defined by the Linux Foundation's SPDX project [1].  For example,
> 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
> at [2].
> 
> Note: From the legal point of view, this patch is supposed to be only
> a change to the textual representation of the license information,
> but in no way any change to the actual license terms. With this patch
> applied, all files will still be licensed under the same terms they
> were before.
> 
> Note 2: The apparent difference between the old "COPYING" and the new
> "Licenses/gpl-2.0.txt" only results from switching to the upstream
> version of the license which is differently formatted; there are not
> any actual changes to the content.
> 
> Note 3: There are some recurring questions about linense issues, such
> as:
>     - Is a "All Rights Reserved" clause a problem in GPL code?
>     - Are files without any license header a problem?
>     - Do we need license headers at all?
> 
> The following excerpt from an e-mail by Daniel B. Ravicher should help
> with these:
> 
> | Message-ID: <4ADF8CAA.5030808 at softwarefreedom.org>
> | Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:35:22 -0400
> | From: "Daniel B. Ravicher" <ravicher at softwarefreedom.org>
> | To: Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de>
> | Subject: Re: GPL and license cleanup questions
> |
> | Mr. Denk,
> |
> | Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> | > - There are a number of files which do not include any specific
> | > license information at all. Is it correct to assume that these files
> | > are automatically covered by the "GPL v2 or later" clause as
> | > specified by the COPYING file in the top level directory of the
> | > U-Boot source tree?
> |
> | That is a very fact specific analysis and could be different across the
> | various files.  However, if the contributor could reasonably be expected
> | to have known that the project was licensed GPLv2 or later at the time
> | she made her contribution, then a reasonably implication is that she
> | consented to her contributions being distributed under those terms.
> |
> | > - Do such files need any clean up, for example should we add GPL
> | > headers to them, or is this not needed?
> |
> | If the project as a whole is licensed under clear terms, you need not
> | identify those same terms in each file, although there is no harm in
> | doing so.
> |
> | > - There are other files, which include both a GPL license header
> | > _plus_ some copyright note with an "All Rights Reserved" clause. It
> | > has been my understanding that this is a conflict, and me must ask
> | > the copyright holders to remove such "All Rights Reserved" clauses.
> | > But then, some people claim that "All Rights Reserved" is a no-op
> | > nowadays. License checking tools (like OSLC) seem to indicate this is
> | > a problem, but then we see quite a lot of "All rights reserved" in
> | > BSD-licensed files in gcc and glibc. So what is the correct way to
> | > deal with such files?
> |
> | It is not a conflict to grant a license and also reserve all rights, as
> | implicit in that language is that you are reserving all "other" rights
> | not granted in the license.  Thus, a file with "Licensed under GPL, All
> | Rights Reserved" would mean that it is licensed under the GPL, but no
> | other rights are given to copy, modify or redistribute it.
> |
> | Warm regards,
> | --Dan
> |
> | Daniel B. Ravicher, Legal Director
> | Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Moglen Ravicher LLC
> | 1995 Broadway, 17th Fl., New York, NY 10023
> | (212) 461-1902 direct  (212) 580-0800 main  (212) 580-0898 fax
> | ravicher at softwarefreedom.org   www.softwarefreedom.org
> 
> [1] http://spdx.org/
> [2] http://spdx.org/licenses/
> 
> 
> Especially patch 2 is way too big for posting on the ML (patch
> size: 6.5M, 5769 files changed, 6007 insertions, 91862 deletions).
> Patches 2/5 through 5/5 will therefore NOT be posted here.
> Instead, I pushed this code into the "SPDX-License-IDs" branch of the
> u-boot-testing repository, see
> 
> 	git://git.denx.de/u-boot-testing.git
> 	http://git.denx.de/u-boot-testing.git
> resp.
> 	http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot/u-boot-testing.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/SPDX-License-IDs
> 
> 
> Signed-off-by: Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de>

Along with the patch to fix common/cmd_io.c (the only file to have been
badly mangled that I can find) that I just posted, along with a patch
that takes the changes you made in v2 and v3 of 1/5, and does that as a
separate patch (so I can re-use the git tree of yours as-is), this is
applied to u-boot/master and I'll push it out soon (in case you think we
need to squash things back into the first patch).  Thanks!

-- 
Tom
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