From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from www.llwyncelyn.cymru ([82.70.14.225]:49606 "EHLO fuzix.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752487AbdKHRUb (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Nov 2017 12:20:31 -0500 Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2017 17:19:38 +0000 From: Alan Cox Subject: Re: WTF? Re: [PATCH] License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license Message-ID: <20171108171938.7df66c65@alans-desktop> In-Reply-To: <20171107214259.GC16026@wotan.suse.de> References: <20171107020607.GA26910@magnolia> <20171107072040.GB4586@infradead.org> <20171107073940.GB4654@kroah.com> <20171107172042.GB26910@magnolia> <20171107182903.GA4588@kroah.com> <20171107184658.56b87d41@alans-desktop> <20171107191526.x3rzfcnnlmaz264d@thunk.org> <20171107192846.GA24617@infradead.org> <20171107202648.GB10679@kroah.com> <20171107214259.GC16026@wotan.suse.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-xfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: List-Id: xfs To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman , Christoph Hellwig , Theodore Ts'o , "Darrick J. Wong" , Eric Sandeen , xfs , Richard Fontana , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > By default all files without license information are under the default > license of the kernel, which is GPL version 2. Which is factually incorrect. They are under a licence that is at least as permissive as GPL v2. However they may be under a more permissive licence and as you are not the rightsholder you don't have the right to relicence them mroe restrictvely. For example I find a reference piece of code whose author says it is 'too trivial to copyright'. I (not the author0 place that code in the kernel. The licence on that code is still 'too trivial to copyright' (by estoppel). That's GPL 2 compliant but it is *NOT* GPL. As anyone can contribute third party code that is GPL compliant legitimately you can't assume any unmarked code is GPL, merely 'at least GPL'. Alan