Re: Licensing discrepancies or ambiguities

[Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org>]

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On 2023-11-21, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 11:10:57AM -0800, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
>
>> I've been reviewing the copyright and license information for Das U-Boot
>> in preparation for uploading to Debian, and found a few surprises.
>> 
>>  tools/libfdt/fdt_rw.c: /* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ BSD-2-Clause */
>
> This comes from the kernel and has been clarified there:
> // SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-or-later OR BSD-2-Clause)

That's much better! Thanks for looking into it! I suspect there are
quite a few that get pulled in from linux or elsewhere that might have
similar issues.


>> I *think* according to the SPDX spec this needs an OR or an AND. I also
>> see no copyright declaration, although maybe there is a standard
>> interpretation for this.
>> 
>> Similar issue with (though thankfully they include copyright
>> declarations):
>> 
>>  include/bloblist.h:/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ BSD-3-Clause */
>>  common/bloblist.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ BSD-3-Clause
>
> Simon?
>
>>  doc/README.ubispl:# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL 2.0+ BSD-3-Clause
>
> Should be an OR as well, yes, but it's also out of date and we could
> just delete if a problem.

Ok.

>> This one has a non-existent license:
>> 
>>   test/lib/strlcat.c: // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.1+
>> 
>> No such license exists, though thankfully it references the exact file
>> in the original glibc sources it came from, which is listed as
>> LGPL-2.1+.
>
> Since you did the research would you mind sending the patch? Thanks.

Will do eventually!



Also found some more ambiguous ones where the license text is in
conflict with the SPDX identifiers:

  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds-/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ */
  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds-/*
  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds- * Copyright (c) 2011-2012 The Chromium OS Authors.
  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds: * Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style license that can be
  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds- * found in the LICENSE file.
  arch/sandbox/cpu/u-boot-spl.lds- */

The referred to LICENSE file does not appear to exist in u-boot, and
exactly what the text of this BSD-style license is ... a mystery.

And lib/zstd includes many entries in a similar situation:

  lib/zstd/Makefile-# Copyright (c) Facebook, Inc.
  lib/zstd/Makefile-# All rights reserved.
  lib/zstd/Makefile-#
  lib/zstd/Makefile:# This source code is licensed under both the BSD-style license (found in the
  lib/zstd/Makefile-# LICENSE file in the root directory of this source tree) and the GPLv2 (found
  lib/zstd/Makefile-# in the COPYING file in the root directory of this source tree).
  lib/zstd/Makefile-# You may select, at your option, one of the above-listed licenses.

This seems like it would be "GPL-2.0 OR BSD-*something*", but it is unclear
what BSD-style maps to, as the LICENSE file is not present where it
claims.

Many similar discrepancies can be found with:

  git grep -B4 -A3 'BSD-style'


I probably have mroe to dig up, but these are the ones that leapt out at
me for now!

live well,
  vagrant

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