(Please CC me on replies, not subscribed to LKML) Hi,
Somewhat of an odd question, but none of the files in question seem to have a copyright header on them... For a kernel .config file, either from one of the defconfig or any other *config option that automates the answer: 1. What license does the file fall under? 2. Who are the copyright holders? Naively, since the defconfigs are bundled with the kernel, that could fall under GPLv2-only implicitly, but lacking any explicit copyright headers makes this interesting (arch/*/configs/* contain lots of files, no copyright headers on them). If I manually write the names of some configuration options to a new .config file, at that point I logically am the only author and have copyright of it. My editor slaps a default license on it of BSD-2. Thereafter I run olddefconfig, and now it's a combined work of the kernel's defconfig and my manual settings. If GPL-2 was inherited from the kernel tree, this is now a combined BSD-GPL2 work, or is it? The kernel config tools did consider my file as input, possibly overrode the settings if they didn't work with others, and re-output everything. If the files are to be marked with a copyright header, who is the holder of it that it should be attributed to? Alternatively, is this a case where the work is not copyrightable, and the files should have a notice to that effect? Background: Gentoo has a bunch of "stock" kernel configurations for release engineering, our initramfs tool (genkernel), and other endeavors over the years. These projects claim BSD, GPL2, LGPL2 on various pieces, and I don't think they can all be correct. I'm working on getting them into one place, because some of them have been getting stale, but the differing licenses raised a red flag to me. -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Developer, Infrastructure Lead E-Mail : robb...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
