While it is good that the "Licenses/" directory contains the text for all licenses that are applicable to u-boot code, it is harder to determine at a glance what the default and/or preferred license is. While humans can look at the Licenses/README file, this is not machine parseable, making it tricky for license detection tools to automatically determine/report on the overall / aggregate u-boot license.
The project previously had a top level COPYING file containing a short blurb, followed by the GPL license text. This was removed back in commit eca3aeb352c964bdb28b8e191d6326370245e03f when the "Licenses/" directory was introduced. For the benefit of automated tools, it is helpful to retain a top level COPYING file in the repository. Rather than duplicate the license text, however, a symlink from the Licenses/gpl-2.0.txt file should suffice. Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <[email protected]> --- Some further context. This desire for a COPYING (or LICENSE) file originates in the context of the QEMU project, which maintains mirrors of both current upstream u-boot, and an old fork of u-boot. QEMU is hosted on gitlab.com and relies on GitLab's Open Source Program which grants the project free access to the full range of GitLab's otherwise pay-for features & resources. They have introduced a new process for their OSS Program applications which automatically checks if the overall license reported by every repository is OSI approved. Since u-boot lacks a top level COPYING or LICENSE file, GitLab fails to identify u-boots overall license. As a result QEMU was unable to apply for the OSS Program until removing the u-boot mirrors, but we'd like to reinstate them. I am somewhat uncomfortable asking u-boot maintainers to accept this change just to work around limitations of the commercial GitLab service. None the less the presence of a top level COPYING / LICENSE file is a broadly accepted OSS standard, so it is understandable that GitLab relied on that. Using a symlink bridges between that standard and u-boot's current Licenses dir approach in a low overhead manner. >From a purely cosmetic view, if looking at any u-boot mirror on either GitLab or GitHub, AFAICS, neither are identifying & reporting the project license, and this ought to resolve that minor cosmetic issue. COPYING | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 120000 COPYING diff --git a/COPYING b/COPYING new file mode 120000 index 00000000000..1ed3ba6a13c --- /dev/null +++ b/COPYING @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Licenses/gpl-2.0.txt \ No newline at end of file -- 2.50.1
