Re: [PATCH 5/9] s390: net: add SPDX identifiers to the remaining files

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman
Date: Wed Nov 15 2017 - 04:22:50 EST


On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 09:22:49PM +0100, Heiko Carstens wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 06:38:04PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > It's good to have SPDX identifiers in all files to make it easier to
> > audit the kernel tree for correct licenses.
> >
> > Update the drivers/s390/net/ files with the correct SPDX license
> > identifier based on the license text in the file itself. The SPDX
> > identifier is a legally binding shorthand, which can be used instead of
> > the full boiler plate text.
> >
> > This work is based on a script and data from Thomas Gleixner, Philippe
> > Ombredanne, and Kate Stewart.
> >
> > Cc: Julian Wiedmann <jwi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Ursula Braun <ubraun@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Kate Stewart <kstewart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@xxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > diff --git a/drivers/s390/net/fsm.c b/drivers/s390/net/fsm.c
> > index 8c14c6c3ad3d..f0c7c182b077 100644
> > --- a/drivers/s390/net/fsm.c
> > +++ b/drivers/s390/net/fsm.c
> > @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
> >
> > +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> > /**
> > * A generic FSM based on fsm used in isdn4linux
> > *
>
> What's the rationale to add GPL-2.0 to this file? This seems to be a bit
> confusing since this file has no explicit license template, except this
> one:
>
> MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
>
> Which, according to include/linux/module.h translates to
> "GPL" [GNU Public License v2 or later]
>
> On the other hand there are files like drivers/s390/char/zcore.c which just
> contain a statement "License: GPL", which was converted to GPL-1.0+ (see
> patch 4 of this series).
> Right now I'm not saying that anything is wrong here, but I'd like to
> understand the rationale.

For any files with no explicit license in them, like this one, the
"implicit" license of GPL-2.0 is assumed. See commit b24413180f56
("License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no
license") in Linus's tree for a full description of this, where we
converted all in-tree files at the time that did not have a explicit
license in it. It seems this file missed that initial commit, sorry, I
don't know how that happened, especially as this file has been in the
tree for a very very long time.

Philippe, any ideas how we missed this file in the previous large sweep?

thanks,

greg k-h