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On 07/28/2013 11:40 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Hello all,
I need some help / recommendations how we should handle non-trivial license issues. For example, please have a look at the NE2000 network driver code:
drivers/net/ne2000.h drivers/net/ne2000.c drivers/net/ne2000_base.h drivers/net/ne2000_base.c
- First, these files include a statement that this code has been
derived from Linux kernel and from eCOS sources and that it's released unter "GPL", but without stating wehter this means GPL-v2 or GPL-v2+ or whatever.
- Second, it includes the eCOS license header which basically says
it's GPLv2+ plus some additional rights.
- Third, if you track down the Linux source code mentioned above,
this again says only "GPL" without additional specification.
Two questions arise:
- What should the resulting license(s) be in this specific case? I
tend to interpret plain "GPL" as "GPLv2+", so we could probably summarize the license terms here as "eCos-2.0".
What do you think?
I grabbed (because of the omap watchdog patch) 2.4.17, and that's (a) older than our ne2k driver and (b) Already a GPLv2 and not 'or later'. This is, I think, GPL-2.0.
- I feel it would be helpful for future investigations if we are
able to document our current understanding, so we don't have to re-investigate all this again and again each time we run into these files. My proposal is to define an additional "magic string"
SPDX-License-Comments:
which could be used to mark a text section that would contain such explanations.
Wound this make sense, or do you have a better suggestion?
Sounds good. In this case we would say something like "Linux Kernel driver and eCos driver files both used as reference".
- -- Tom