From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-wm0-f41.google.com ([74.125.82.41]:52235 "EHLO mail-wm0-f41.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753054AbeD2KPO (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Apr 2018 06:15:14 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20180429052617.GC24294@kroah.com> References: <20180429052617.GC24294@kroah.com> From: =?UTF-8?B?UmFmYcWCIE1pxYJlY2tp?= Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2018 12:15:11 +0200 Message-ID: Subject: Re: LICENSES: Missing ISC text & possibly a category ("Not recommended" vs. "Preferred licenses") Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: linux-xfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: List-Id: xfs To: Greg Kroah-Hartman Cc: Thomas Gleixner , LKML , Jonathan Corbet , DOCUMENTATION , Linus Torvalds , Andrew Morton , Philippe Ombredanne , Christoph Hellwig , Russell King , Rob Herring , Jonas Oberg , Joe Perches , linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org, Kate Stewart , Florian Fainelli , "Luis R. Rodriguez" On 29 April 2018 at 07:26, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: > On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 11:25:17PM +0200, Rafa=C5=82 Mi=C5=82ecki wrote: >> Due to some maintainers *preferring* BSD-compatible license for DTS >> files [0], I was writing mine using ISC. I had no very special reason >> for it: I was choosing between BSD-2-Clause, MIT and ISC. I've chosen >> ISC as I read about its "removal of language deemed unnecessary". >> >> I took a moment to look at the new SPDX thing and noticed that: >> 1) File license-rules.rst provides "LICENSES/other/ISC" as an example > > Yeah, bad example, we should fix that text up. Care to send a patch? :) Sure. I see that license-rules.rst also refers to LICENSES/other/ZLib which also doesn't exist. As "other" directory contains only GPL-1.0 and MPL-1.1 I guess one of these should be referenced. >> 2) License file LICENSES/other/ISC doesn't exist >> 3) ISC is listed as an *example* under the "Not recommended licenses" > > Yes, please don't use it if at all possible. > >> First of all, as ISC is used by some files in the Linux kernel, I >> think it's worth adding to the LICENSE/*/ISC. > > I see it is only used in a very small number of dts files. Why not just > use BSD-2-Clause instead? What do you find in ISC that is not available > to you with just BSD? As said, I read about its "removal of language deemed unnecessary". I assumed that the simpler license text the better. >> Secondly, it isn't 100% clear to me if ISC is preferred or not >> recommended. File license-rules.rst suggests the later by listing it >> as an example for "Not recommended". It's just an example though, so >> I'm not 100% sure without seeing it in either: "preferred" or "other" >> directories. Also if anyone finds it "Not recommended", can we get a >> short explanation why is it so, please? > > The license is functionally equalivant to BSD-2, so why would you want > to add more complexity here and have two licenses that are the same be > "recommended"? I don't insist on it, I'm trying to figure out what's the best for the Linux community. On the other hand I could ask why do we want more complexity by having MIT license. It's very similar to the BSD-2-Clause after all. AFAIK the only minor differences are that: 1) MIT clearly allows sublicensing 2) BSD 2-Clause clearly requires distributing *binaries* with copyrights + license text --=20 Rafa=C5=82