Re: WTF? Re: [PATCH] License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license

[Darrick J. Wong]

On Sat, Nov 25, 2017 at 08:12:23PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > > This would be even better:
> > > 
> > > /*
> > >  * Driver for SMSC USB3503 USB 2.0 hub controller driver
> > >  *
> > >  * Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Dongjin Kim (tobetter@xxxxxxxxx)
> > >  */
> > > ...
> > > SPDX_MODULE_LICENSE("GPL-2.0+")
> > > 
> > > So yes, SPDX can be improvement. But in current implementation it is
> > > not.
> > 
> > Again, as people seem to keep still missing this point, Linus asked for
> > the format to look like it does today, using // at the top.  Thomas and
> > I originally did it first the way with the SPDX line in the big comment
> > block.
> > 
> > If you don't like the format, complain and convince him otherwise, you
> > are not getting anywhere by responding to this old topic about it
> > again.
> 
> Hey, Linus. This // SPDX at the begining of file looks really
> ugly. Can we get something that looks less bad?
> 
> And BTW I responded to this uglyness before, but you just tried to
> make me shut up, and then did not reply. Given what quality you
> normally expect from patch submitters, you are doing pretty poor job
> here.
> 
> > Having it be the first line of the file is good, it's obvious, and
> > stands out, which is the point, you want it to, it's a license :)
> 
> What is good about that? License is about the least interesting thing
> about the file. Point of SPDX conversion (see the mail I was replying
> to?) was to make license information _less_ intrusive, not more. Tools
> can find SPDX anywhere in the file for the people that really care.
> 
> That's how it works in U-Boot, which people are using as example of
> reasonable SPDX conversion:
> 
> /*
>  * Copyright (c) 2012 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved.
>  * Copyright (c) 2010-2011 NVIDIA Corporation
>  *  NVIDIA Corporation <www.nvidia.com>
>  *
>  * SPDX-License-Identifier:     GPL-2.0+
>  */

Agree.

If/when anyone /does/ get to SPDX'ing the xfs files that already have
a comment blob at the top, this is my preferred format for doing that.

(versus having a sole //-style comment right before a multiline
comment)

--D

> 
> 									Pavel
> -- 
> (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
> (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html