On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 10:26:50AM +0000, One Thousand Gnomes wrote: > > So that GPL header at begining of each file becomes one line... and so > > that if it is BSD/GPL dual licensed is plain to see, and I don't have > > to read the notices saying "oh this is gpl.. but if you want to, > > delete gpl above and use license below". > > That won't happen though. You'd require every single corporate legal > department of every large company that touched the file to agree that the > SPDX was equivalent to the content, and some of them probably won't. > Lawyers don't seem to believe in #include <legalese.h> I can confirm that some lawyers, including some that work for large companies, are concerned that an SPDX-* header is equivalent to a copyright statement and copyright permission statement. More precisely, there is no legal cases on point with respect to that particular question, and how this situation might be interpreted in different legal systems is going to be a matter of judgement. Morever, consider that people can easily fetch a single file out of a git repository by referencing some URL such as: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git/plain/contrib/e2croncheck ... so if the only place where the formal language which is in some top-level COPYING file, it might be quite easy for a potential infringer to claim that they didn't know about what "SPDX" and "GPL" meant, and thus they couldn't be held responsible. Some folks might be a bit more comfortable if at the very least there is at least a Copyright claim, without the the full license, or at least something like "This file may only be copied under the terms of the license found at <URL of License", but honestly, is the effort needed to change how we display the copyright permission statement really worth the effort? - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe devicetree" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
