Hi, On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 09:20:16PM +0200, Karsten Merker wrote: > Hello, > > I have today read the patch by Hans de Goede to add a dts file > for the "Banana Pi" development board (see > http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-July/276339.html) > and have stumbled over the license declaration at the beginning: > > > +/* > > + * Copyright 2014 Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> > > + * > > + * The code contained herein is licensed under the GNU General Public > > + * License. You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License > > + * Version 2 or later at the following locations: > > + * > > + * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html > > + * http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html > > + */ > > The phrase "The code contained herein is licensed under the GNU > General Public License" does not make explicitly clear under > which version(s) of the GPL the code can be used. From the > following "You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public > License Version 2 or later at the following locations [...]" one > can deduce that the intention is most probably to license the > code unter GPL2+, but from a legal point of view this information > should be an explicit part of the license statement itself, as > strictly formally speaking the latter statement does only inform > the reader where he can find the text of GPL2 and later GPL > versions, but does not expressly apply them to the code. This is > of course a rather formalistic view and may well be seen as > beancounting, but I have seen too many cases where formal license > ambiguities have led to problems years later, so I proposed to > Hans to change the wording in his patch to something more > explicit, similar to the dts files for other arm platforms. > > A phrasing like used in the GPL appendix ("This program is > free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the > terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free > Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your > option) any later version") would avoid any ambiguity. > > Hans agreed that the current phrasing is not ideal and should > probably be changed to something unabiguous but pointed out that a > similar wording is used in all the other dts files for Allwinner > SOCs (arch/arm/boot/dts/sun?i-a*.dts) and proposed to refer the > issue to you as the Allwinner platform maintainer (with the > linux-arm-kernel and devicetree lists in CC). Thanks for reporting this. From a quick grep, the issue is actually broader than just Allwinner. At least the following platforms seem to do the same: - mvebu - axm5516 - bcm - berlin - ea3250 - ecx-2000 - highbank - imx / mxs - lpc32xx - phy3250 - picoxcell - shmobile - rockchip - socfpga - spear - ste - zynq Would you mind sending a patch to fix all these? Thanks, Maxime -- Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering http://free-electrons.com
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