[U-Boot] [PATCH] nand_util.c: Correct licensing

This file is GPL-2.0 with Freescale granting rights for GPL-2.0+. This part was dropped by accident in the SPDX updates.
Cc: Scott Wood scottwood@freescale.com Signed-off-by: Tom Rini trini@ti.com --- drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c | 9 ++++++++- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c b/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c index 5246bbf..36679c8 100644 --- a/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c +++ b/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c @@ -14,7 +14,14 @@ * Copyright (C) 2008 Nokia Corporation: drop_ffs() function by * Artem Bityutskiy dedekind1@gmail.com from mtd-utils * - * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ + * 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. + * + * SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
#include <common.h>

Dear Tom Rini,
In message 1383164489-29450-1-git-send-email-trini@ti.com you wrote:
This file is GPL-2.0 with Freescale granting rights for GPL-2.0+. This part was dropped by accident in the SPDX updates.
Sorry, but this doesn't work.
--- a/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c +++ b/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c @@ -14,7 +14,14 @@
- Copyright (C) 2008 Nokia Corporation: drop_ffs() function by
- Artem Bityutskiy dedekind1@gmail.com from mtd-utils
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
- 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.
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
The idea of the Licnese IDs is that you just grep for these lines to produce proper information about the license status of the file. Here, the special clause would be totally missed.
I don't know of any (even halfway) established method to express such a situation where different licenses apply to certain parts of a file in terms of Lincese IDs. The only clean way to solve this I can think of at this time is to define a new License ID (GPL-2.0-FSL+ ?) and move this explanation to a file in the Licenses/ directory.
But I still see a pretty serious problem with the fact that the text is completely unspecific - or do we have any clear understanding for which exact parts of the file the "copyright is held by Freescale and which are not considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code" ?
We need to know exactly the lines of code this applies to; otherwise I think the only safe way to solve this issue is by licensing the whole file as GPL-2.0.
For the future, we should be much more careful that no such mess creeps in; the scope of licence terms should be at no smaller units than file level.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 09:36:23PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Dear Tom Rini,
In message 1383164489-29450-1-git-send-email-trini@ti.com you wrote:
This file is GPL-2.0 with Freescale granting rights for GPL-2.0+. This part was dropped by accident in the SPDX updates.
Sorry, but this doesn't work.
--- a/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c +++ b/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c @@ -14,7 +14,14 @@
- Copyright (C) 2008 Nokia Corporation: drop_ffs() function by
- Artem Bityutskiy dedekind1@gmail.com from mtd-utils
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
- 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.
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
The idea of the Licnese IDs is that you just grep for these lines to produce proper information about the license status of the file. Here, the special clause would be totally missed.
I don't know of any (even halfway) established method to express such a situation where different licenses apply to certain parts of a file in terms of Lincese IDs. The only clean way to solve this I can think of at this time is to define a new License ID (GPL-2.0-FSL+ ?) and move this explanation to a file in the Licenses/ directory.
But I still see a pretty serious problem with the fact that the text is completely unspecific - or do we have any clear understanding for which exact parts of the file the "copyright is held by Freescale and which are not considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code" ?
We need to know exactly the lines of code this applies to; otherwise I think the only safe way to solve this issue is by licensing the whole file as GPL-2.0.
I'd be fine with this solution, really (and calling common/cmd_nand.c which is missing a specific tag but also has the Freescale bit) as GPL-2.0 as well. I'll shoot that out in the morning then, assuming no one disagrees with that idea.

On Wed, 2013-10-30 at 21:36 +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Dear Tom Rini,
In message 1383164489-29450-1-git-send-email-trini@ti.com you wrote:
This file is GPL-2.0 with Freescale granting rights for GPL-2.0+. This part was dropped by accident in the SPDX updates.
Sorry, but this doesn't work.
--- a/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c +++ b/drivers/mtd/nand/nand_util.c @@ -14,7 +14,14 @@
- Copyright (C) 2008 Nokia Corporation: drop_ffs() function by
- Artem Bityutskiy dedekind1@gmail.com from mtd-utils
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
- 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.
- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
The idea of the Licnese IDs is that you just grep for these lines to produce proper information about the license status of the file. Here, the special clause would be totally missed.
I don't know of any (even halfway) established method to express such a situation where different licenses apply to certain parts of a file in terms of Lincese IDs. The only clean way to solve this I can think of at this time is to define a new License ID (GPL-2.0-FSL+ ?) and move this explanation to a file in the Licenses/ directory.
Yeah, it doesn't mix well with the license IDs. Feel free to remove it (but not the copyright line itself, which also got accidentally removed) if you think it's more hindrance than help, which with the SPDX scheme and the lack of continued talk about v2-only purges, it probably is.
But I still see a pretty serious problem with the fact that the text is completely unspecific - or do we have any clear understanding for which exact parts of the file the "copyright is held by Freescale and which are not considered a derived work of GPL v2-only code" ?
The main situation in which it would be useful is if v2-only code is being purged (which was talked about around the time I added those), in which case upon manual inspection of the history it could possibly avoid needing to toss the entire file -- especially if other contributers added themselves to the statement, and there were to end up being little to nothing left of the original v2-only code. I thought it would be better if such consent were to be issued up front, to minimize the people that need to be contacted later on who may no longer be reachable. I suppose these e-mails in the archives serve a similar purpose.
In any case, I don't think a new tag would be appropriate (and putting FSL in it would discourage other contributors from joining in, which is the opposite of the point). For most purposes, including any that don't involve manual inspection, it's the license on the entire file that matters, which is GPL-2.0.
-Scott
participants (3)
-
Scott Wood
-
Tom Rini
-
Wolfgang Denk