On Sun, Jun 01, 2014 at 01:43:01AM +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote: > (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). >
I am not a lawyer, but surely _many_ of the kernel files do not contain any explicit copyright information ? > 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. > Why does your editor put a default license on anything ? In some cases, it is bound to be wrong. For example, if you were to ever submit a kernel patch, in the kernel the license would be GPL-2 although, if you created a new file, you could also license that as BSD-2 if it was not a derivative of existing kernel code. Similarly, if you ever create a patch for any other project which does not use a BSD license, then your patch will have uncertain status. If I was being awkward, I would suggest that the config would not be useful until you had run it through "make oldconfig" or similar, and that therefore the kernel license of GPL-2 applies. > If the files are to be marked with a copyright header, who is the holder > of it that it should be attributed to? > Iff the work is copyrightable (I do not have an opinion on that), surely the license only matters if you breach it ? ;-) If you distribute a compiled kernel with the source, and all of that source is GPL-2, then I assume you are in the clear. For "extras" which include binaries without source, my understanding is that you would always be vulnerable to kernel copyright holders. So, I suspect that the attribution of a config file is not particularly important. > 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. > To the extent that GPL-2 can include LGPL-2 and BSD, I suggest that you label them all as GPL-2. That is the licence of the kernel, and for practical reasons it will not change (this was discussed when somebody asked about GPL-3 : even if the main copyright holders wanted to make the change (and many do not), some copyright holders are no longer contactable). You might be able to dual-license some of these distro files, but I have no idea if that would be appropriate. ĸen -- Nanny Ogg usually went to bed early. After all, she was an old lady. Sometimes she went to bed as early as 6 a.m. -- 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/
