Re: [PATCH v6] checkpatch.pl: Add SPDX license tag check

From: Joe Perches
Date: Fri Feb 02 2018 - 16:10:18 EST


On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 14:57 -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 1:06 PM, Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[]
> > Right now, there are many missing licenses
> > that are already used by various existing
> > SPDX-License-Identifier: entries.
> >
> > APACHE-2.0
>
> Given that Apache 2.0 is not compatible with GPL 2, that would pretty
> much mean anything with Apache license is dual licensed and it would
> be the other license that applies. Do we really want/need license
> texts for all the other possible licenses that don't apply to kernel
> files?

There are 2 uses of SPDX.*Apache in staging.

drivers/staging/android/ashmem.h:// SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0 OR Apache-2.0)
drivers/staging/android/uapi/ashmem.h:// SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0 OR Apache-2.0)

I believe each specific license text should be
available in either the actual source file with
the Apache license or in a specific LICENSES/
file in the kernel tree.

> If so,
> this should all just be scripted to sync LICENSES/ with
> found SPDX tags in the kernel.

Right. That's probably best.

> ISC and OpenSSL are only in license-rules.rst as examples. We should
> just fix those examples to something else.

Sounds good to me.

I should have excluded Documentation/process/license-rules.rst
from the SPDX matches.

Are significant portions of that document generic across
multiple projects or is it entirely specific to linux?

cheers, Joe