Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] target/s390x: Fix LGPL version in the file header comments

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 15:18:29 +0000
Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 09:01:01AM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> > On 1/29/19 7:51 AM, Cornelia Huck wrote:  
> > > On Tue, 29 Jan 2019 14:37:47 +0100
> > > Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> > >   
> > >> It's either "GNU *Library* General Public License version 2" or
> > >> "GNU Lesser General Public License version *2.1*", but there was
> > >> no "version 2.0" of the "Lesser" license. So assume that version
> > >> 2.1 is meant here.  
> > > 
> > > I think we can assume that.
> > > 
> > > Given that there have been several of these cases (and that there's a
> > > lot of boilerplate in general): Should we adopt SPDX license
> > > identifiers for QEMU, as the Linux kernel did? They also discovered and
> > > fixed some problems/oddities while at it.  
> > 
> > I'm also in favor of SPDX license identifiers - their brevity and
> > machine-parsability favors more accurate usage and fewer copy/paste
> > mistake propagation.  
> 
> I'm curious if the kernel developers actually ended up removing the
> current boilerplate license text from files they added SPDX tags
> to ?
> 
> The original work only added SPDX tags to files which lacked any
> pre-existing license text
> 
>   https://lwn.net/Articles/739183/
> 
> Although its from 2017, the LWN article indicates there was
> some uncertainty about whether they'd actually go through with
> removing license text, especially for files where the person
> removing the text is not the exclusive copyright holder:
> 
> 
>   "An additional goal is to eventually get rid of the other license
>    texts; the consensus seems to be that the SPDX identifier is a 
>    sufficient declaration of the license on its own. But removing
>    license text from source files must be done with a great deal 
>    of care, so it may be a long time before anybody works up the 
>    courage to attempt that on any files that they do not themselves 
>    own the copyright for. "
> 
> I can understand the sentiment that SPDX identifier alone should be
> sufficient, but I think I'd want to see an explicit legal opinion from
> a lawyer who works with open source before removing any license text.
> 
> Any one know if anything changed in this respect since that 2017
> lwn article ?

The boilerplate texts have been removed; see e.g. 13d1d559f04a ("s390:
drivers: Remove redundant license text").

The commit messages for this and other patches also suggest that SPDX
identifiers are legally binding, so this has probably been vetted by a
couple of lawyers already.