Re: [PATCH v4 17/33] media: add SPDX headers on Kconfig and Makefile files - Greg Kroah-Hartman

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
Cc: devel@driverdev.osuosl.org,
	Philipp Zabel <p.zabel@pengutronix.de>,
	Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>,
	Chen-Yu Tsai <wens@csie.org>, Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>,
	linux-rockchip@lists.infradead.org,
	Helen Koike <helen.koike@collabora.com>,
	Sakari Ailus <sakari.ailus@linux.intel.com>,
	Ezequiel Garcia <ezequiel@collabora.com>,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	Linux Media Mailing List <linux-media@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 17/33] media: add SPDX headers on Kconfig and Makefile files
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 14:22:09 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200331122209.GA1627483@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200331120608.GB4767@pendragon.ideasonboard.com>

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 03:06:08PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Mauro,
> 
> Thank you for the patch.
> 
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 01:11:53PM +0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > Most of media Kconfig/Makefile files already has SPDX,
> > but there are a few ones still missing. Add it to them.
> 
> I think it's a good idea to state the license of each source file, the
> patch looks fine to me. I've however been thinking about licenses for
> build system files recently, and I'll hijack this thread a bit to ask a
> question :-)
> 
> For a project like the Linux kernel, and especially for subsystems that
> are covered by a single license, the choice is easy, we can apply the
> same license to the build files. However, for a project that contains
> components covered by different licenses (such as, for instance, an LGPL
> library, a GPL application and a BSD plugin), how should the license
> covering the build system files be selected ? I searched a bit for
> guidance on this topic, and couldn't find much.

By "default" if there is no license on a file in the kernel tree, it
falls under the GPLv2 license and we should explicity state it, like
this patch does.

So this is fine, but if you want to license the build files some other
way, that's good too, but do so when you add them to the tree, not at
some later time when it could cause confusion :)

thanks,

greg k-h

_______________________________________________
linux-arm-kernel mailing list
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel