On Wed, 2019-05-22 at 13:32 +0900, Masahiro Yamada wrote: > On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 10:34 PM Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [] > > - Add GPL-2.0-only or GPL-2.0-or-later tags to files where our scan > > tools can determine the license text in the file itself. Where this > > happens, the license text is removed, in order to cut down on the > > 700+ different ways we have in the kernel today, in a quest to get > > rid of all of these. [] > I have been wondering for a while > which version of spdx tags I should use in my work. > > I know the 'GPL-2.0' tag is already deprecated. > (https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0.html) > > But, I saw negative reaction to this: > https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/975394/ > > Nor "-only" / "-or-later" are documented in > Documentation/process/license-rules.rst > > In this patch series, Thomas used 'GPL-2.0-only' and 'GPL-2.0-or-later' > instead of 'GPL-2.0' and 'GPL-2.0+'. > > Now, we have a great number of users of spdx v3 tags. > $ git grep -P 'SPDX-License-Identifier.*(?:-or-later|-only)'| wc -l > 4135 > So, what I understood is: > > For newly added tags, '*-only' and '*-or-later' are preferred. > > (But, we do not convert existing spdx v2 tags globally.) > > > " > Joe's patch was not merged, but at least > Documentation/process/license-rules.rst > should be updated in my opinion. > > (Perhaps, checkpatch.pl can suggest newer tags in case > patch submitters do not even know that deprecation.) I'd still prefer the kernel use of a single SPDX style. I don't know why the -only and -or-later forms were used for this patch, but I like it. I believe the -only and -or-later are more intelligible as a trivial reading of SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 would generally mean to me the original GPL-2.0 license without the elision of the (or at your option, any later version) bits whereas SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only seems fairly descriptive. Is it agreed that the GPL-<v>-only and GPL-<v>-or-later forms should be preferred for new SPDX identifiers? If so, I'll submit a checkpatch patch. I could also wire up a patch to checkpatch and docs to remove the /* */ requirement for .h files and prefer the generic // form for both .c and .h files as the current minimum tooling versions now all allow // comments .
