Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752772AbaBXKNM (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Feb 2014 05:13:12 -0500 Received: from mail-ea0-f172.google.com ([209.85.215.172]:47748 "EHLO mail-ea0-f172.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752738AbaBXKNH (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Feb 2014 05:13:07 -0500 Message-ID: <530B1B25.5090601@monstr.eu> Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 11:12:53 +0100 From: Michal Simek Reply-To: monstr@monstr.eu User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130330 Thunderbird/17.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Theodore Ts'o" , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Felipe Balbi , Subbaraya Sundeep Bhatta , linux-usb@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Subbaraya Sundeep Bhatta , devicetree@vger.kernel.org, Wolfgang Denk Subject: Re: SPDX-License-Identifier References: <20140220182257.GF23217@saruman.home> <5306F458.9010706@monstr.eu> <20140221160442.GA17506@kroah.com> <5307790A.4050806@monstr.eu> <20140221161246.GM31902@saruman.home> <53077C5F.9000407@monstr.eu> <20140221162045.GN31902@saruman.home> <20140221165633.GA5465@kroah.com> <53078C30.7060703@monstr.eu> <20140221175720.GA21660@kroah.com> <20140221190125.GL31047@thunk.org> In-Reply-To: <20140221190125.GL31047@thunk.org> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="6kCPkRWvEhKH4Md15meI4LeV38MOB8m0i" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156) --6kCPkRWvEhKH4Md15meI4LeV38MOB8m0i Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 02/21/2014 08:01 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 09:57:20AM -0800, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: >>> But shouldn't we at least write somewhere >>> that it has connection to spdx.org where you can find out that licens= es. >> >> Why? Are these licenses so unknown that no one knows what they are? >> And, as part of the kernel-as-a-whole-work, they all resolve to GPLv2 >> anyway, and we have that license in the source tree, so nothing else >> should be needed. >=20 > Note that not all lawyers are in agreement about this, so if this is a > driver being developed by a company, you may want to ask your > corporate counsel if they have an opinion about this. I've received > advice of the form that it's not obvious that regardless of whether or > not us *engineers* understand what all of the licensing terms mean, > what's important is whether someone who is accused of "borrowing" > GPL'ed code and dropping it in a driver for some other OS can convince > a judge whether or not it's considered "obvious" from a legal > perspective what an SPDX header means, and what is implied by an SPDX > license identifer. >=20 > Also note that with the advent of web sites that allow people to do > web searches and turn up a singleton file via some gitweb interface, > the fact that the full license text is distributed alongside the > tarball might or might have as much legal significance as it once had. >=20 > But of course, I'm not a lawyer, and if your company has is paying for > the development of the driver, the Golden Rule applies (he who has the > Gold, makes the Rules), and each of our respective corporate lawyers > may have different opinions about what might happen if the question > was ever to be adjudicated in court. Thanks Ted. Aren't all these points already answered by SPDX project? I believe that they should know how this should be handled properly. Thanks, Michal --=20 Michal Simek, Ing. (M.Eng), OpenPGP -> KeyID: FE3D1F91 w: www.monstr.eu p: +42-0-721842854 Maintainer of Linux kernel - Microblaze cpu - http://www.monstr.eu/fdt/ Maintainer of Linux kernel - Xilinx Zynq ARM architecture Microblaze U-BOOT custodian and responsible for u-boot arm zynq platform --6kCPkRWvEhKH4Md15meI4LeV38MOB8m0i Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlMLGyUACgkQykllyylKDCFZbwCfXdMV+R4jytSBF70ufER8bYU8 lasAnjqJTcpYVxQImAKrRvq17xntlI4n =sXfG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --6kCPkRWvEhKH4Md15meI4LeV38MOB8m0i-- -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/