[libvirt PATCH 00/20] Use SPDX-License-Identifier

Ján Tomko jtomko at redhat.com
Tue Aug 4 18:10:02 UTC 2020


On a Tuesday in 2020, Eric Blake wrote:
>On 8/4/20 12:33 PM, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
>>On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 07:22:40PM +0200, Ján Tomko wrote:
>>>Replace the license blurb in every single file with:
>>>   SPDX-License-Identifier: <human-readable-string>
>>>Coincidentally, this is also machine readable.
>>
>>I've requested legal clarification previously on whether doing this
>>kind of replacement is possible.

Thank you for asking that.
I was assmuing based on https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt-ci/-/merge_requests/39
where you only objected to the copyright change that such change in
the license blurb is okay.

>>The response I got was that it is
>>NOT acceptable unless you have the permission of all copyright
>>holders on the source files. The terms of the GPL require that
>>license notices are not modified. Replacing this header with the
>>SPDX tag counts as modification, even though its essentially
>>just a different way of presenting the same information.
>>
>>NB, the fact that the kernel did such a conversion is not on its
>>own, a sufficient ok for doing it in libvirt, as we don't see
>>the prep work/analysis/discussions that led into the kernel's
>>change.

I'm sorry, I haven't been following the kernel lists. Given that
the consent of *all* the contributors is needed, should I just
drop the idea or would you be open to acking the changes where
you are one of the contributors (IOW: libvirt)

>>
>>So NACK to this change.
>
>While wholesale replacement of the text is legally problematic, 
>_adding_ the SPDX tag (in addition to what is already present), should 
>not be an issue, if you want to respin a lighter-weight patch along 
>those lines.

That might be beneficial in the GPL-v3+ cases. Possibly GPL-v2+ cases
(as opposed to LGPL-v2+ cases) to single them out.

I don't see the point in libvirt adding more of cruft while not removing
any.

Jano

>
>-- 
>Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
>Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
>Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org
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