From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Maxime Ripard Subject: Re: Formal license ambiguity in arch/arm/boot/dts/sun?i-a*.dts Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 15:04:30 +0200 Message-ID: <20140803130430.GY3952@lukather> References: <20140731192016.GA6869@excalibur.cnev.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="o+N5O4bNGxsQWEyZ" Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20140731192016.GA6869-Hlt6eto4P0pdWf7zwHaZWbNAH6kLmebB@public.gmane.org> Sender: devicetree-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Karsten Merker Cc: Hans de Goede , linux-arm-kernel-IAPFreCvJWM7uuMidbF8XUB+6BGkLq7r@public.gmane.org, devicetree-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, Arnd Bergmann , Olof Johansson , khilman-QSEj5FYQhm4dnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org List-Id: devicetree@vger.kernel.org --o+N5O4bNGxsQWEyZ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 09:20:16PM +0200, Karsten Merker wrote: > Hello, >=20 > I have today read the patch by Hans de Goede to add a dts file > for the "Banana Pi" development board (see > http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-July/276339.ht= ml) > and have stumbled over the license declaration at the beginning: >=20 > > +/* > > + * Copyright 2014 Hans de Goede > > + * > > + * The code contained herein is licensed under the GNU General Public > > + * License. You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License > > + * Version 2 or later at the following locations: > > + * > > + * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html > > + * http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html > > + */ >=20 > The phrase "The code contained herein is licensed under the GNU > General Public License" does not make explicitly clear under > which version(s) of the GPL the code can be used. From the > following "You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public > License Version 2 or later at the following locations [...]" one > can deduce that the intention is most probably to license the > code unter GPL2+, but from a legal point of view this information > should be an explicit part of the license statement itself, as > strictly formally speaking the latter statement does only inform > the reader where he can find the text of GPL2 and later GPL > versions, but does not expressly apply them to the code. This is > of course a rather formalistic view and may well be seen as > beancounting, but I have seen too many cases where formal license > ambiguities have led to problems years later, so I proposed to > Hans to change the wording in his patch to something more > explicit, similar to the dts files for other arm platforms. >=20 > A phrasing like used in the GPL appendix ("This program 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 of the License, or (at your > option) any later version") would avoid any ambiguity. >=20 > Hans agreed that the current phrasing is not ideal and should > probably be changed to something unabiguous but pointed out that a > similar wording is used in all the other dts files for Allwinner > SOCs (arch/arm/boot/dts/sun?i-a*.dts) and proposed to refer the > issue to you as the Allwinner platform maintainer (with the > linux-arm-kernel and devicetree lists in CC). Thanks for reporting this. =46rom a quick grep, the issue is actually broader than just Allwinner. At least the following platforms seem to do the same: - mvebu - axm5516 - bcm - berlin - ea3250 - ecx-2000 - highbank - imx / mxs - lpc32xx - phy3250 - picoxcell - shmobile - rockchip - socfpga - spear - ste - zynq Would you mind sending a patch to fix all these? Thanks, Maxime --=20 Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering http://free-electrons.com --o+N5O4bNGxsQWEyZ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJT3jNeAAoJEBx+YmzsjxAgepUP/2FR8y+fLQVNDwfKRSFyuXOa jPVYsZmSlPQxz4mXHwosOaKRvN6iwHbGKLV1CZ5v9GdW8aEv/nKUjpWT9Hr4/p+8 msA7N/wU+DeOm6sckDUmM2VJWu/QrrWJ0Ar+v4qXtGRQB3HnybAuJBMwSVm09Osz ZHjJQXj2rtsNAst+vI29Zo1R4aPRw8wwJ8mcUF9y1i6a9U8AFd71EJDuf74bW9bN y/7VG+8lwz8yZ9GSHA/5k1LJFgFKw8J3Tz1PzAjiLbh8/+aYO+/UAuxjWopZeZHU qnXbwzxBEGo5d9aa1o+uuAS82Q6TRkGHedPlak7JejogYiGb4nqkd/4MZ8MB3PRB /0mqHlUbH+WerO+bHi1fDj0DlNkXoPryNpSG7X6c/XLegMYtMl8s+KwWyBEajEfD fJTA7qbW4s0BZjBqOW1ZrrEPFaY8fk3vPLKIJQ//Vq0tA2GUq77N+blH93aZJ/E3 OB0wCOVuaoFZ3aQwik3CZZ7ItsIPaojj/HcHpD27vx05CFufrljvP5xb0wtWTAgq mSwED/TUrPGIE7X526A2xt5CEidTY6DHKG56847ym8eba12xA4RYX8bzINCGdu2U E+GwcxDQsFaVH5v8Ysz8xs8X1Ss6M1Cpawc+FMJHe7EUFBCNXKW5W+p2dIPscmup ttfQNiLyB96r/CpjqRFU =G0HG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --o+N5O4bNGxsQWEyZ-- -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe devicetree" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html