[U-Boot] SPDX License status

Wolfgang Denk wd at denx.de
Mon Aug 21 15:25:40 UTC 2017


Dear Tom,

In message <20170819011542.GE17193 at bill-the-cat> you wrote:
> 
> For all of the dts/dtsi files that we copy in-place from Linux,
> converting them to SPDX tags would be churn that has to be kept in-place
> every update, and upstream does not want them (I had a chat with Frank
> or Rob at some point, I think).

Do I interpret this correctly that you think we should NOT insert
SPDX tags into files imported from Linux (or other projects)?  But
how do we keep track of the origin of such files, then?  Git meta
data information is not useful for automatic tracking tools (or are
there such clever tools available by now?)...

> So, when I've run U-Boot through the "old" SPDX-2.0 tools, it was quite
> happy to diagnose the information on dts files from the kernel
> correctly, so I don't see changing them to tags as being beneficial.  I

I tend to disagree here.  THe process of inserting License tags
makes automatic scanning easier, and it documents that somebody
looked at this.

> I would be quite happy to see more patches along the lines of
> 78e9e71c83cf which correct the missing information in files by pulling
> in specific changes from their respective upstream (or at least a
> specific release that contains the change) that corrects this
> information.  I also suspect this will leave us with a few files that in
> the kernel today have loose wording and we have to either live with it,
> or talk to upstream about updating it.

So what do we do for example with all the .dts / .dtsi files?  Would
you accept patches to insert SPDX tags for U-Boot?  [I see no chance
to do this in Linux mainline.]

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,      Managing Director: Wolfgang Denk
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
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.


More information about the U-Boot mailing list