Re: [PATCH v2 08/10] drivers: watchdog: Replace GPL license notice with SPDX identifier

Richard Fontana
2023-05-13T13:43:53Z

On Sat, May 13, 2023 at 6:53 AM Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/12/23 19:46, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 6:07 AM Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> diff --git a/drivers/watchdog/sb_wdog.c b/drivers/watchdog/sb_wdog.c
> >> index 504be461f992a9..822bf8905bf3ce 100644
> >> --- a/drivers/watchdog/sb_wdog.c
> >> +++ b/drivers/watchdog/sb_wdog.c
> >> @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
> >> +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-1.0+
> >> /*
> >> * Watchdog driver for SiByte SB1 SoCs
> >> *
> >> @@ -38,10 +39,6 @@
> >> * (c) Copyright 1996 Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
> >> * All Rights Reserved.
> >> *
> >> - * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
> >> - * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
> >> - * version 1 or 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
> >
> > Shouldn't this be
> > // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-1.0 OR GPL-2.0
> > (or in current SPDX notation GPL-1.0-only OR GPL-2.0-only) ?
> >
>
> Nope, as it will fail spdxcheck.py. Also, SPDX specification [1]
> doesn't have negation operator (NOT), thus the licensing requirement
> on the above notice can't be expressed reliably in SPDX here.
>
> [1]: https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/SPDX-license-expressions/

The GPL identifiers in recent versions of SPDX include an `-only` and
an `-or-later` variant. So I don't see why you can't represent it as
`GPL-1.0-only OR GPL-2.0-only`. From what I understand the kernel
requires/prefers use of the earlier approach to GPL identifiers (which
was better in my opinion) under which `GPL-1.0 OR GPL-2.0` would at
least be semantically similar. I don't see why you need a negation
operator in this case. You have other patches where you used the
`-only` identifiers.

Richard