Re: [PATCH v2 6/6] nvme-apple: Add initial Apple SoC NVMe driver

Hector Martin
2022-04-19T06:00:11Z

On 19/04/2022 14.31, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 04:20:55PM +0200, Sven Peter wrote:
>> +++ b/drivers/nvme/host/apple.c
>> @@ -0,0 +1,1597 @@
>> +// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
>> +/*
>> + * Apple ANS NVM Express device driver
>> + * Copyright The Asahi Linux Contributors
>
> Is that actually a valid legal entity?

It does not have to be. See here for the rationale behind this style of
copyright line:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects/

TL;DR name- and year-ful copyright lines are basically useless, as they
become out of date almost immediately after they are applied. This way
we acknowledge that the files have multiple contributors (and that the
copyright line isn't trying to be an exhaustive list thereof). This
style is so far rare, but not unheard of, in the kernel; there is prior
art (e.g. grep for 'Chromium OS Authors').

(I get to re-tell this story every time we upstream to a new subsystem;
I think it's the sixth time or so :-) )

--
Hector Martin (marcan@marcan.st)
Public Key: https://mrcn.st/pub