how much license information inside the kernel ?

devzero
2008-10-30T10:55:43Z

hi,

i found that there is a LOT of repeating licensing information in the kernel.

for me,

find ./linux-2.6.27 -type f -exec cat {} \; |egrep "free software|GNU General Public License|Free Software Foundation|version 2 of the License|distributed in the hope|WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY|FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR"

gives a file sized ~3.5M

That`s more than 1% of the kernel source.

What about the idea to shorten that licening information to a minimum , e.g. by shrinking that to a single, catchy line , linking to a special licensing file like COPYING or linking to the FSF website ?

please no flames, i know this idea could be pure dynamite for some people - but i thought 3.5M is worth this mail.

regards
roland

ps:
i`m not sure if that has been discussed already, but i didn`t find that in the archive. please ignore, otherwise.
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