[U-Boot] [PATCH 02/60] mmc: tegra: move pad init into MMC driver

Wolfgang Denk wd at denx.de
Mon Apr 25 23:52:53 CEST 2016


Dear Stephen Warren,

In message <571E733A.1060208 at wwwdotorg.org> you wrote:
> On 04/24/2016 04:20 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > Dear Stephen,
> >
> > In message <1461099580-3866-3-git-send-email-swarren at wwwdotorg.org> you wrote:
> >>
> >>   /*
> >> + * Copyright 2011-2016 NVIDIA Corporation
> >>    * (C) Copyright 2009 SAMSUNG Electronics
> >>    * Minkyu Kang <mk7.kang at samsung.com>
> >>    * Jaehoon Chung <jh80.chung at samsung.com>
> >> - * Portions Copyright 2011-2015 NVIDIA Corporation
> >>    *
> >>    * SPDX-License-Identifier:	GPL-2.0+
> >>    */
> >
> > Both the change of the position of the copyright note and the
> > rewording contain a subtle but still significant change of meaning.
> >
> > Now it seems as if Nvidia was the major copyright holder.  Is this
> > intentional?
> 
> I was not aware that the order actually implied anything. I would 
> imagine the copyright dates and "git blame" output were more relevant 
> since they pin-point specific changes, whereas copyright headers don't 
> have the detail to convey the whole picture.

Well, just read the text before and after the patch, and let the
meaning sink in...

> In this case, both "git log" and "git blame" certainly show that NVIDIA 
> is the primary author of this code. I deliberately removed "Portions" 
> because it was something uncommon and seems inaccurate. I don't recall 
> why I changed the order; probably because I was editing a lot of files 
> and just happened to paste the message there. I imagine the Samsung 
> copyright notice is only there because the general structure of the file 
> (set of functions implemented) was based on an existing driver, rather 
> than because any of the non-boilerplate code was written by them.

I did not check this, and I don't intend to do so.  you may actually
be right, and your modification may be perfectly OK.

But from just reading the patch, it leaves a stale aftertaste.

> Unfortunately we've (NVIDIA at least) been a little lax making sure the 
> NVIDIA copyright messages are kept up-to-date when editing files, hence 
> why this series had to change a lot of them for the first time recently. 
> If we went back and re-wrote all of git history paying strict attention 
> to the copyright notice dates and formatting, I imagine the set of 
> copyright-related changes in this series would be much smaller.

It is difficult for any outside party to verify this.  I feel such
changes require a lot of tact, and global edits are probably not a
good idea.   You know that I don't post very often lately, so you can
imagine that this must have stirred me a bit.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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