[RFC PATCH] link principle license to COPYING

[Alex Bennée]

Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 04:51:42PM +0100, Alex Bennée wrote:
>
>> Some license scanners are particularly dumb and when combined with
>> automatic license scanning for FLOSS accreditation on forges cause
>> problems on renewal. As GPL 2.0 applies to the core code link the main
>> licence text to COPYING to keep everything happy.
>> 
>> This caused issues for the QEMU project recently as we mirror (two!)
>> copies of u-boot in our project.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Alex Bennée <alex.bennee at linaro.org>
>
> Since Daniel Berrangé posted a similar patch 3 days ago, I assume the
> gitlab license renewal is coming up quickly.

We fixed it by temporally moving the repo to another project (although
it seems that is not a true mirror as mirroing needs the full paid
GitLab). However it broke a bunch of down-streams tracking earlier
branches.

>
> In principal, I'm fine with this and will apply a patch shortly.
>
> In practice, we've always had to get a human involved at Gitlab to get
> our license renewed as we're clearly within the required terms, it's
> just that we've also got some further reading people should do.

The GitLab process is a click though automated one now. However I did
check GitLab identifies the right license with the patch:

  https://gitlab.com/stsquad/u-boot/


-- 
Alex Bennée
Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro