Re: [libnftnl PATCH] Use SPDX License Identifiers in headers

[Phil Sutter <phil@nwl.cc>]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 03:40:55PM +0100, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 01:04:49PM +0100, Phil Sutter wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 11:49:39PM +0100, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 10:06:57PM +0200, Phil Sutter wrote:
> > > > diff --git a/examples/nft-chain-add.c b/examples/nft-chain-add.c
> > > > index 13be982324180..fc2e939dae8b4 100644
> > > > --- a/examples/nft-chain-add.c
> > > > +++ b/examples/nft-chain-add.c
> > > > @@ -1,10 +1,7 @@
> > > 
> > > Maybe more intuitive to place
> > > 
> > > +/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later */
> > > 
> > > in the first line of this file? This is what was done in iproute2.
> > 
> > Fine with me! I just semi-automatically replaced the license text block
> > by this specifier and didn't care about its position. A quick check of
> > how things are done in linux.git shows it's not entirely consistent
> > there: When Thomas Gleixner did an equivalent to my patch in commit
> > 0fdebc5ec2ca ("treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX -
> > gpl-2.0_56.RULE (part 1)"), he used double-slash comments, while Greg
> > Kroah-Hartman chose to use multi-line comments in commit b24413180f56
> > ("License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no
> > license"). Is this random or am I missing a detail?
> 
> What I learnt in my crash course about license compliance is that this
> SPDX stuff is for robots that parse source code. I suspect placing
> this in the first line saves time parsing files for them.

Sounds reasonable. I was merely wondering about the different comment
styles, but I guess it won't matter since any robot has to expect both
styles anyway.

> For a human standpoint, to quickly look at the first line of each file
> via script, then ... head -1 $file | sort | uniq -c.

Speaking of each file, do we care about libnftnl's header files?

> > BTW: Jan suggested to also (introd)use SPDX-FileCopyrightText label, but
> > spdx.dev explicitly states: "Therefore, you should not remove or modify
> > existing copyright notices in files when adding an SPDX ID."[1] What's
> > your opinion about it?
> 
> No idea, I hate legal stuff, really. I saw a room full of people
> taking about SPDX.

"I have seen things you people wouldn't believe ..." :D

> Being pragmatic, I would do what I see people do around with this, and
> they are just turning license text into SPDX license labels.

ACK.

> And getting back to the original topic, we only have to agree where to
> place the SPDX license line for libnftnl. I don't have a strong
> opinion on this, if you like your approach, that is fine by me.

Line 1 is fine with me! I'll submit a v2.

Thanks, Phil