Re: [patch V4 01/11] Documentation: Add license-rules.rst to describe how to properly identify file licenses

From: Mauro Carvalho Chehab
Date: Sat Nov 25 2017 - 14:54:17 EST


Em Sat, 25 Nov 2017 09:30:46 -1000
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> escreveu:

> On Sat, Nov 25, 2017 at 9:17 AM, Pavel Machek <pavel@xxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > There's logical place in the comment, and it should look like this:
> >
> > /*
> > * Driver for SMSC USB3503 USB 2.0 hub controller driver
> > *
> > * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
> > * Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Dongjin Kim (tobetter@xxxxxxxxx)
> > */
>
> And this is *exactly* what I don't want o see, because now the SPDX
> placement is basically entirely random, and we'll get stupid conflicts
> that are must nastier, and people will get it wrong and we'll end up
> with two lines etc etc headaches.
>
> Yes, the single line at the top _also_ causes conflicts, but they are
> really easy to resolve exactly because there is absolutely no
> ambiguity about what the resolution is, and there is no question that
> there could be two different SPDX lines in the file.
>
> The "//" format is ambiguous and simple, and works well for the first line.
>
> And if we have the long-term plan to move over to // (which I really
> hope for), it's also the cleanest of them all.

Let me see if I got it straight. At drivers/media/common/siano/smsir.c,
we have, currently:


/****************************************************************

Siano Mobile Silicon, Inc.
MDTV receiver kernel modules.
Copyright (C) 2006-2009, Uri Shkolnik

Copyright (c) 2010 - Mauro Carvalho Chehab
- Ported the driver to use rc-core
- IR raw event decoding is now done at rc-core
- Code almost re-written

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it 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.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

****************************************************************/

With is completely out of standard. I'd like to add an SPDX tag there
and, while doing that, adjust the comments.

So, if I understand well, your preference would be to make it like:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
//
// Siano Mobile Silicon, Inc.
// MDTV receiver kernel modules.
// Copyright (C) 2006-2009, Uri Shkolnik
//
// Copyright (c) 2010 - Mauro Carvalho Chehab
// - Ported the driver to use rc-core
// - IR raw event decoding is now done at rc-core
// - Code almost re-written

Right?

Also, what about the header file (that, currently, has an identical header?

The way it was proposed (with /**/), it would be:

/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ */
/*
* Siano Mobile Silicon, Inc.
* MDTV receiver kernel modules.
* Copyright (C) 2006-2009, Uri Shkolnik
*
* Copyright (c) 2010 - Mauro Carvalho Chehab
* - Ported the driver to use rc-core
* - IR raw event decoding is now done at rc-core
* - Code almost re-written
*/

With, IMHO, looks really ugly.

Thanks,
Mauro