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

Guenter Roeck
2023-05-14T13:08:32Z

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 12:07:28AM +0900, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Sat, May 13, 2023 at 09:43:39AM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > 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.
>
> But Linux does not use the newer versions of SPDX given that we started
> the conversion before the "-only" variant came out. Let's stick with
> the original one please before worrying about converting to a newer
> version of SPDX and mixing things up.
>

Either case I'd prefer to have no conversion if there is no means
to express the original license (ie GPL-1.0 or GPL-2.0 and nothing else)
in acceptable SPDX form.

Thanks,
Guenter