[U-Boot] common/cmd_nand.c license terms

[U-Boot] common/cmd_nand.c license terms

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Scott,

with commit ea533c2 "cmd_nand: some infrastructure fixes and
refactoring" (Mon Aug 02, 2010), you added the following license
header to common/cmd_nand.c :

+ * Copyright 2010 Freescale Semiconductor
+ * The portions of this file whose copyright is held by Freescale and which
+ * are not considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code may be distributed
+ * and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
+ * published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
+ * License, or (at your option) any later version.

Looking at this commit, it is totally unclear to me which parts of the
newly added code you could be referring to with your "which are not
considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code".

Your addition makes the legal situation of the whole file pretty much
indeterminable.  Could you please be so kind and explain what exactly
your intention was, and what exactly yuou were referring to?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
How come everyone's going so slow if it's called rush hour?

[U-Boot] common/cmd_nand.c license terms

[Scott Wood]

On 07/28/2013 07:31:00 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Scott,
> 
> with commit ea533c2 "cmd_nand: some infrastructure fixes and
> refactoring" (Mon Aug 02, 2010), you added the following license
> header to common/cmd_nand.c :
> 
> + * Copyright 2010 Freescale Semiconductor
> + * The portions of this file whose copyright is held by Freescale  
> and which
> + * are not considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code may be  
> distributed
> + * and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License  
> as
> + * published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
> + * License, or (at your option) any later version.
> 
> Looking at this commit, it is totally unclear to me which parts of the
> newly added code you could be referring to with your "which are not
> considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code".
> 
> Your addition makes the legal situation of the whole file pretty much
> indeterminable.  Could you please be so kind and explain what exactly
> your intention was, and what exactly yuou were referring to?

The license of the whole file is GPLv2 only.  The intent was to  
preemptively grant relicensing permission for GPLv2 or later, if a  
similar agreement could be reached from other copyright holders, or if  
the file eventually changes to the point where none of the original  
v2-only code remains, and if what is left isn't considered derivative  
of that older code.  Likewise, it could be useful (in conjunction with  
git history) if code gets moved from one file to another.

As for which parts are considered a derivative, I am not a lawyer and  
can't answer that.  It's not a licensing question, but rather a basic  
copyright question.  The point is that it wouldn't be Freescale raising  
a copyright complaint[1] if you were to license it as v2 or later.

It was a response to your asking for no more v2-only code in U-Boot.   
We can remove the above text (except the actual copyright line) and  
make it clearly v2-only if you'd prefer.

-Scott

[1] If you were to actually relicense U-Boot to v3, we'd have a  
different sort of complaint, in that we'd probably want to fork, but  
that's separate from licensing.

[U-Boot] common/cmd_nand.c license terms

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Scott,

In message <1375127231.30721.54@snotra> you wrote:
>
> > Looking at this commit, it is totally unclear to me which parts of the
> > newly added code you could be referring to with your "which are not
> > considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code".
> >
> > Your addition makes the legal situation of the whole file pretty much
> > indeterminable.  Could you please be so kind and explain what exactly
> > your intention was, and what exactly yuou were referring to?
> 
> The license of the whole file is GPLv2 only.  The intent was to  

Is it?  Why so?  It appears that the first versions of that file did
not include any license header at all, which means they were
contributed under the project-wide GPLv2+ license.

Only your commit added - 7 years later! - a GPLv2 only license header,
and I really wonder what the base for this change would be?

> preemptively grant relicensing permission for GPLv2 or later, if a  
> similar agreement could be reached from other copyright holders, or if  
> the file eventually changes to the point where none of the original  
> v2-only code remains, and if what is left isn't considered derivative  

Which "original v2-only code" are you referring to?

> As for which parts are considered a derivative, I am not a lawyer and  
> can't answer that.  It's not a licensing question, but rather a basic  
> copyright question.  The point is that it wouldn't be Freescale raising  
> a copyright complaint[1] if you were to license it as v2 or later.
> 
> It was a response to your asking for no more v2-only code in U-Boot.   
> We can remove the above text (except the actual copyright line) and  
> make it clearly v2-only if you'd prefer.

I fail to see where your "v2-only" notion is coming from.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and
implement a PL/1 compiler.                             -- T. Cheatham

[U-Boot] common/cmd_nand.c license terms

[Scott Wood]

On 07/29/2013 03:08:23 PM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Scott,
> 
> In message <1375127231.30721.54@snotra> you wrote:
> >
> > > Looking at this commit, it is totally unclear to me which parts  
> of the
> > > newly added code you could be referring to with your "which are  
> not
> > > considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code".
> > >
> > > Your addition makes the legal situation of the whole file pretty  
> much
> > > indeterminable.  Could you please be so kind and explain what  
> exactly
> > > your intention was, and what exactly yuou were referring to?
> >
> > The license of the whole file is GPLv2 only.  The intent was to
> 
> Is it?  Why so?  It appears that the first versions of that file did
> not include any license header at all, which means they were
> contributed under the project-wide GPLv2+ license.
> 
> Only your commit added - 7 years later! - a GPLv2 only license header,
> and I really wonder what the base for this change would be?

Hmm...  The same text appears in drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c, which  
does have a pre-existing v2-only header.  I probably applied it to  
cmd_nand.c as well because it was unclear whether the existing code was  
also v2-only.

The project-wide COPYING did not have the "or later" language until Jan  
9 2011 (commit b9347188729992ef8282a2854889d8dcc25175aa), so it's not  
clear to me that the project-wide license was GPLv2+ at the time that  
the older cmd_nand.c code was submitted, or even at the time that I  
added the above text.

-Scott