From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Arnout Vandecappelle Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:19:33 +0200 Subject: [Buildroot] [PATCH v2] barebox: fix license information In-Reply-To: <20120828225431.791a7aec@skate> References: <1346138387-4344-1-git-send-email-spdawson@gmail.com> <20120828144426.483cd251@skate> <503D0458.2020700@mind.be> <20120828225431.791a7aec@skate> Message-ID: <503D5205.30306@mind.be> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: buildroot@busybox.net On 08/28/12 22:54, Thomas Petazzoni wrote: > Le Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:48:08 +0200, > Arnout Vandecappelle a ?crit : > >>> Also, uboot.mk mentions that the license is GPLv2+, but the U-Boot >>> COPYING file says: >>> >>> U-Boot is Free Software. It is copyrighted by Wolfgang Denk and >>> many others who contributed code (see the actual source code for >>> details). You can redistribute U-Boot and/or modify it under the >>> terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by >>> the Free Software Foundation. Most of it can also be distributed, >>> at your option, under any later version of the GNU General Public >>> License -- see individual files for exceptions. >>> >>> So I guess that formally speaking U-Boot is GPLv2 only, and not GPLv2+. >> >> Given the large number of special cases we've encountered in the licensing >> support, I propose that we require one or two Acks on all licensing patches. >> And for new packages, the Acks should explicitly mention that it Acks the >> license information. Failing the Acks, it could still be committed with >> a flag that it needs review, e.g. "GPLv2+ (needs review)". >> >> I think for the legal-info, we should really be conservative. Now that it >> exists, people will rely on it. And if they rely on the wrong information, >> they could be in trouble. > > Well, this means having to wait even more before being able to commit a > new package, I'm not sure I like to see more "bureaucracy" when it > comes to getting patches applied. Instead, getting things in movement > usually encourages people to react when something looks wrong. I.e, if > I had left out the barebox and u-boot patches from Simon, maybe nobody > would have commented on them... The fact that I took action by > committing them got the discussion started, we fixed the problems, and > we're good. That's why I say: commit it with (needs review). That will attract more reviews than having it either without legal-info, or with the wrong legal-info. >> OTOH, the trouble would probably just be from your own legal department... >> Copyright holders who create complex, inconsistent licenses are very >> unlikely to try to enforce them. And also the FSFE and similar organisations >> will just go for the obvious GPL violations. So maybe I'm just being >> unnecessarily paranoid here... > > Just like we don't provide any guarantees of the proper functioning of > Buildroot, we don't provide any guarantees of the correctness of the > license information. Now, of course, it's up to us as a community to > ensure that Buildroot works fine (it builds what you need) and has the > most correct licensing information as possible, but we're not trying to > provide 100% guarantees here. The difference is that buildroot users are likely to test the resulting rootfs, but are very unlikely to look a second time at the output of legal-info. It's very difficult to "test" the legal-info - all you have is "code review". For me, the wrong information in legal-info is an order of magnitude worse than no legal-info at all. That said, none of my dozens of customers ever gave a whit about licenses. The most they'd do is verify that there's no GPL linked against the app. So after this post I'll shut up about it. Regards, Arnout -- Arnout Vandecappelle arnout at mind be Senior Embedded Software Architect +32-16-286540 Essensium/Mind http://www.mind.be G.Geenslaan 9, 3001 Leuven, Belgium BE 872 984 063 RPR Leuven LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoutvandecappelle GPG fingerprint: 7CB5 E4CC 6C2E EFD4 6E3D A754 F963 ECAB 2450 2F1F