On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 12:50 PM Allison Randal <allison@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 5/24/19 12:02 PM, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Fri, 24 May 2019, Richard Fontana wrote:
> >> On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 6:12 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> From: Thomas Gleixner tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >>>
> >>> Based on 1 normalized pattern(s):
> >>>
> >>> 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 this program is distributed in the
> >>> hope that it will be useful but without any warranty without even
> >>> the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular
> >>> purpose see the gnu general public license for more details the full
> >>> gnu general public license is in this distribution in the file
> >>> called copying
> >>
> >> I just want to note that the final sentence/paragraph in this pattern,
> >> alerting the user to the location of the license text ("The full GNU
> >> General Public License is in this distribution in the file called
> >> COPYING.") arguably raises its own sort of "keep intact" issue,
> >> separate from the things we've been more focused on (notices of the
> >> applicability of the license, and warranty/liability disclaimers
> >> juxtaposed with the license notice). This may have come up in earlier
> >> cases I looked at but if so I didn't think about it.
> >
> > The reference to the COPYING file is all over the place. But what's
> > worrysome about that? I'd be worried if the boilerplate would be BSD and
> > then point to the COPYING file in the kernel tree, but a plain GPL boiler
> > plate?
> >
> > I can't see how that might change anything, the SPDX identifier is
> > documented to be a placeholder for the full license text which is in the
> > LICENSES directory and pointed to from the reworked COPYING file.
>
> Agreed with Thomas. And besides, it's actually inaccurate for the file
> to say that the full text of the GPL is in the COPYING file, because in
> the Kernel the COPYING file does not contain the text of the GPL, it
> only contains a pointer to it.
Sure, but this group ought to be prepared to address any plausible
"keep intact" argument that might be leveled against what is being
done here, and I'm not totally sure this is not one such argument (and
those sound like good counter-arguments).
Richard
