[U-Boot] SPDX License IDs - moving forward

[Wolfgang Denk]

Hallo,

while working on converting more files to SPDX license IDs and
discussing the whole approach with the SPDX team, a few ideas crossed
my mind.  It would be very helpful if I gould get some feedback on
these:


I wonder if we should not take the idea even a step further.  So far
we only focus on the license terms of the source code.  However,
U-Boot is very flexible to configure, and as is it is not trvial to
tell if a specific piece of code actually gets linked into the final
product.  I wonder if we should turn the comment as we have it now
into actual code, i. e. into a preprocessor macro that compiles the
license ID into the generated object file (probably into a separate
section so you can decide whether or not you want to include this
ieven into the final binary image).  We could easily make the linker
combine identical tags into a single entry, to the total memory
overhead would be minimal.

This would allow to easily find out which components have actually
been built into the final product, so which licenses apply tho that.
You don't have to bother about license terms for code that you don't
actually use in your product, right?


And there is another topic that's on my mind.  License terms for the
source code are one thing, but there are is additional information
that may be relevant when releasing a product, for example (known)
patents or other intellectual property rights that may apply.  For
example, despite the fact that all code to implement FAT/VFAT file
system support is licensed under GPL-2.0+ in U-Boot, we know that
Microsoft holds patents on parts of that technology, which may become
an issue if you include FAT/VFAT support in your product.

Should we also add similar tags to list known patents etc.?  for
example, the FAT code could be augmented like that:

SPDX-Patent-Notice: US5,579,517 US5,758,352 US5,745,902 US6,286,013 EP0618550

[Of course I'm not sure if SPDX would cover such an entry; I'm just
interested in feedback for the general idea.]

Again, I tent to make this a preprocessor macro, so you can easily
determine which (known) patents may apply to your final product.


What do you think?  Does this make sense to you?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
Perl already has an IDE.  It's called Unix.
                      -- Tom Christiansen in 375bd509 at cs.colorado.edu