Re: [PATCH v3] powerpc: Add missing SPDX license identifiers

[Segher Boessenkool]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 04:19:12PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 03:13:50PM +0000, Christophe Leroy wrote:
> > >> - * This file 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, or (at your option) any
> > >> - * later version.

[ ... ]

> > >>    *    As a special exception, if you link this library with files
> > >>    *    compiled with GCC to produce an executable, this does not cause
> > >>    *    the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License.

The "as a special exception" refers to "This file is free software;
you can redistribute it and/or modify it".  It is meaningless without
having anything it is an exception *to* :-)

In general, you should never edit licence texts.

> > > Look at that "special exception", why are you ignoring it here?  You
> > > can't do that :(
> > 
> > I'm not ignoring it, that's the reason why I left it.
> 
> You ignore that part of the license in the SPDX line, why?
> 
> > Isn't it the correct way to do ? How should it be done ?
> 
> You need to properly describe this in the SPDX line.  You did not do so
> here, which means that any tool just looking at the SPDX line would get
> this license wrong.

A new label needs to be defined and documented.  Should be pretty
mechanical to do, but that should see a wider audience than the powerpc
hackers :-)


Segher