From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from ul.coyote.org ([198.50.187.229]:51205 "EHLO ul.coyote.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751086AbdKPL4P (ORCPT ); Thu, 16 Nov 2017 06:56:15 -0500 Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:46:39 +0100 From: Jonas Oberg Subject: Re: [patch 2/7] LICENSES: Add the GPL 2.0 license Message-ID: <20171116114639.GA16946@silk.coyote.org> References: <20171112191821.240484206@linutronix.de> <20171112192142.614461013@linutronix.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <20171112192142.614461013@linutronix.de> Sender: linux-xfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: List-Id: xfs To: Thomas Gleixner Cc: LKML , Linus Torvalds , Andrew Morton , Jonathan Corbet , Kate Stewart , Philippe Ombredanne , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Christoph Hellwig , Russell King , Rob Herring , Joe Perches , linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org, Kate Stewart Hi Thomas, I do appreciate your work on this, it's a welcome addition! > +SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 // GPLv2 only > +SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ // GPLv2 or later I am concerned about this though, as the SPDX-License-Identifier is well known to refer to the license of the document in which it appears, and it would be beneficial to avoid a situation where a tool reading this make the assumption the license text itself it under a particular license. Essentially, let's avoid overloading if we can. >>From my reading, there are two intentions with the above reading: 1) To give usage guidelines and signal that for any source file, adding this exact line would be a valid license identifier, and 2) To make the license identifiers computer understandable such that tools can be updated to validate whether source code includes a license identifier which corresponds to one of the licenses in LICENSES/ I'd propose to not try to do both at the same time and would propose a 'Valid-License-Identifier' tag to meet your second criteria, and a 'Usage-Guidance' tag to meet your first one. The header would then be: Valid-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 Valid-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ Usage-Guidance: To use this license in source code, you can use either of the following tags and values: . SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 // For GPLv2 only SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ // For GPLv2 or any later version Best, -- Jonas Öberg Executive Director FSFE e.V. - keeping the power of technology in your hands. Your support enables our work, please join us today http://fsfe.org/join