[Adding linux-doc@ which I probably should use from the beginning] On 15 May 2016 at 04:43, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 12:44:35AM +0200, Rafał Miłecki wrote: >> >> I recently received a hint that it would be nice/expected to have DTS >> files licensed under BSD. I had no experience with BSD, so I started >> looking at this and the way kernel parts use it. > > There is a lot of sloppiness in some of the driver code. > Unfortunately, fixing it is something that really has to be done by > the copyright holder, or whoever submitted the kernel in the first > place and who has clear knowledge of what the copyright holder had > intended. > > There is also a fairly wide range of seriousness of the various > defects you've listed. On one extreme, although it's true that some > license, such as the ClearBSD license has <Organization> in its > template, when the original code file you've referenced has in its header: > > * Copyright 2004-2012 Analog Devices Inc. > * Licensed under the Clear BSD license. > > ....tt's pretty obvious that Organization should be "Analog Devices Inc". > > In other cases, it's pretty clear that someone copied the drivers from > some out-of-tree distribution (e.g., "see kernel-base/COPYING...") and > where finding the original distribution and then adding the Copyright > permission statement is a pretty easy thing to do. (And in case where > a third party can easily show proof that the intent of the copyright > holder is clearly expressed, that third party probably is able to > submit a patch to fix up the source file. Thanks for your comments. I think I will try to contact authors of unclear drivers once we get requirements described a bit better. Hopefully at least some of them will respond. >> I'm wondering how we could improve this situation. I got 2 main ideas: >> >> 1) Extend MODULE_LICENSE >> We could add new acceptable entries specifying BSD version. We could >> try to improve checkpatch.pl to look for a full license in a header >> (it seems to be required as it has to provide <organization>). Maybe >> we could figure out (with some lawyers?) how to treat sources using >> "Dual BSD/GPL" mentioning GPL only (without BSD) in their header. > > I'm not a fan of this approach. MODULE_LICENSE puts a hint about the > copyright license of a module where it can be found by the module > loader. This is useful to enforce things like GPL_SYMBOL_EXPORT, but > I don't think we should try to make MODULE_LICESE to be more than > that. OK, if others agree, I'm fine with leaving MODULE_LICENSE as is. >> 2) Get clear rules on how to write a header >> If you find extending MODULE_LICENSE a bad idea, maybe we can simply >> help people write proper headers. Explain the problem, provide >> examples, maybe add some check in checkpatch.pl. > > Adding more text about how to add a proper copyright notice and > license permission statement to the SubmittingDrivers file seems like > a good idea. > > I doubt we can make checkpatch.pl smart enough to handle this > situation cleanly. Thanks, I'll prepare & send patch updating SubmittingDrivers and maybe some related files (if needed). However there are some questions I need to ask first: 1) Can we add COPYING-BSD-2-CLAUSE (or similar)? We already have GPL drivers with headers like: a) "Licensed under the GNU/GPL. See COPYING for details." b) "This driver is released to the public under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE version 2" Adding a similar file (e.g. COPYING-BSD-2-CLAUSE) would allow BSD drivers to reference it as well, e.g.: "Licensed under the BSD 2-clause. See COPYING-BSD-2-CLAUSE for details." or similar. As described earlier, there are some drivers /mentioning/ usage of BSD license (in a header or with MODULE_LICENSE) without providing its text at all. 2) How about sharing BSD 3-clause license? Does it make sense to add anything like COPYING-BSD-3-CLAUSE? Should we leave <organization> in license text in such file? Or should we replace it with "author" as some drivers do? How drivers could reference such file? Would a simple "Licensed under the BSD 3-clause. See COPYING-BSD-3-CLAUSE for details." be enough? Or should it be more specific like "With <organization> being Foo Company"? Or maybe we shouldn't add anything like COPYING-BSD-3-CLAUSE at all and just require all drivers to attach whole text of BSD 3-clause license in a header? The same questions apply to Clear BSD license which also has <organization> in its text. -- Rafał -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-doc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
