On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 03:01:53PM -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 12:06:36PM -0800, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 08, 2018 at 10:55:28AM -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote: > > > Hi Greg & Co, > > > > > > A question has come up in the infiniband/rdma space about what SPDX > > > license headers to use for some of our files. > > > > Which is a huge hint you should probably make it a lot simpler :) > > This license text was written in around 2005 and has been copied into > around 659 files in the kernel. It looks like there are > 15 companies > listed as copyright holders, some now defunct. Any hint as to who wrote it in the very first place? And why was it copied everywhere? What drove that decision? > Doug and I are just maintaining a subsystem where this license is > particularly popular and we'd like to ensure we are following the SPDX > rules correctly considering we have inherited this odd license text. > > I'm not sure what power you think Doug and I have to "make it a lot > simpler"? Is there something we can do so long after the fact? Sorry, I thought this was a unique one-off for just this specific driver. > > > The license in this file does not have the same 'disclaimer' text as > > > the reference BSD-2-Clause, which sounds like it shouldn't match based > > > on guideline 2.1.1 ? > > > > Then please tell me what exact license that file is trying to express, > > as it really looks like BSD-2-Clause to me. What were you intending to > > state here, something other than BSD-2? It better have not been a > > "custom" one :) > > I'm pretty confident the intent was to use a "GPLv2 and BSD dual > license" scheme. Beyond that, I don't know what motivated selecting > the warranty clause from the MIT license. It was so long ago nobody > seems to know anymore. > > I don't want to embark on some relicensing quest 12 years after the > fact just to use SPDX.. I thought the point of SPDX was to document > the current licensing situation accurately? Yes it is, but if you think you have a "brand new" license here, that's different and everyone needs to be aware of it. Including your lawyers, what do they think about this? > > > Alternatively, we can keep using the BSD-2-Clause tag if it was > > > determined that is correct for some reason? > > > > It really looks like this is BSD-2 to me, if not, please specify the > > exact license in the SPDX line. > > Well, this is why I am writing to you. To ask if BSD-2-Clause is the > right tag for the license example in include/uapi/rdma/ib_user_sa.h > (which is copied into around 659 kernel files) I'm not a lawyer, so I can't provide legal intrepretation for a license, sorry. > If you ignore the preamble and start at "Redistribution" then: > > The first 50% of the license text matches the sample license of SPDX > BSD-2-Clause, up until "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED". > > The final paragraph matches the sample license of the SPDX for MIT. > > I've grepped through the SPDX database and no SPDX tag includes this > combination of 2 clauses and warranty text together. > > My reading of the matching rules is that this is a 'no match' to > BSD-2-Clause. > > If you say it is BSD-2-Clause then we will keep using that and move > on. > > If you agree it doesn't match then I will request a new tag and use > that instead. I think maybe Kate and Phillipe need to chime in here with what they think to do, as they are the ones that have examined the thousands of different variants of license floating in the kernel tree. If the intent is for this to really be bsd-2, then yes, we should be able to just mark it as such, delete the confusing license text, and be done with it. But to be sure, I strongly suggest you go ask your corporate lawyers if they are ok with it, as they are the ones that need to also agree with this. thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rdma" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
