On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 12:01:46AM +0100, Ken Moffat wrote: > > 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 ? On closer inspection, more files than I thought don't have any explicit copyrights on them. ~67% of files in v3.13 had the text 'Copyright' or 'Licens' appear in them.
> Why does your editor put a default license on anything ? It's my stock header, customized by per-directory vimrc. The non-project-specific default one actually has a CHANGEME string it in, to help remind me that it needs an edit before I release that file. I was just using the BSD license on the file as an example. Submissions to other open source projects are generally bound by the license of the project, with a few exceptions (I've put patches into public domain to avoid signing some CLA-like agreements). > 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. That's the case I was interested in :-). > > 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. I agree with your reasoning if I was distributing kernel sources or compiled kernels, but this is going to be a package of kernel configurations only. > > 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. If the rest of the logic is correct, then the non-GPL2 license on these files was never valid in the first place; they inherited GPL2 from the kernel from the get go, and I don't need to be concerned about the hassle of formally relicensing them by contacting the authors of the configs (which again, aren't always contactable anymore). -- 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/
