Re: [PATCH 0/5] SPDX license identifiers in all DD drivers

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 06:29:48PM +0100, Daniel Scheller wrote:
> Hi Greg,
> 
> Am Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:49:32 +0100
> schrieb Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>:
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 10:01:27PM +0100, Daniel Scheller wrote:
> > > From: Daniel Scheller <d.scheller@gmx.net>
> > > 
> > > This series adds SPDX license identifiers to all source files which are
> > > copyright by either Digital Devices GmbH or Metzlerbros GbR, who are
> > > the original authors of the ddbridge, ngene, cxd2099, mxl5xx, stv0910
> > > and stv6111 bridge/demod/tuner drivers, with the mxl5xx driver being
> > > based on source code released by MaxLinear.
> > > [...]
> > > The original intention was to fully replace all the licensing headers
> > > with only the SPDX License Identifiers as it is done in a lot of other
> > > in-tree drivers nowadays. However, Digital Devices disagreed to do this
> > > and expressed major concerns regarding this, in that a machine readable
> > > license tag instead of a full license boilerplate won't hold up equally,
> > > so we agreed to keep the license boilerplate text as is right now.  
> > 
> > That's really odd, who at that company can I talk to about this?  Or
> > really, what lawyer at that company can I point my lawyer at to talk
> > about this, that's the only way this is going to get resolved.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure, but I guess for a first start it's best to
> contact Ralph (from Metzlerbros) and Manfred (from Digital
> Devices), being the authors and copyright owners of the DDDVB driver
> package where the drivers originate from and thus is the upstream for
> the mainlined copies of the mentioned drivers. Both are in the Cc list
> (rjkm and mvoelkel) of this thread.
> 
> > If it helps, _ALL_ of the major companies that are kernel developers are
> > onboard with the removal of the crazy boiler-plate text, so this tiny
> > holdout should be easy to resolve.
> > 
> > > Greg, I'm Cc'ing you on this due to the last paragraph, as AFAIK you're
> > > one of the initiators of the SPDX tagging initiative, and you even added
> > > tags to 10k+ files all over the tree :-) so we maybe can discuss this
> > > further, also with DD, in the hopes you're fine with this - sorry in
> > > advance if not.  
> > 
> > See my review of your first patch here, this needs to be done a lot
> > differently...
> 
> Check. Thanks for reviewing. The intent was to do a full cleanup of all
> licensing things in one go, per driver. Will do one patch for SPDX and
> eventual boilerplate cleanup for all drivers, one for MODULE_LICENSE
> and one for missing headers in the next iteration. Though I'd wait
> with that for now if you like to contact Ralph and Manfred, and do a v2
> based on the outcome.

You can always just do the "add a SPDX line" patches now, that touch
nothing else.  No one can get upset at that.

thanks,

greg k-h