Re: [PATCH] treewide: fix typos of SPDX-License-Identifier

From: Greg KH
Date: Sat Jun 01 2019 - 12:33:39 EST


On Sat, Jun 01, 2019 at 12:22:42PM +0900, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
> Prior to the adoption of SPDX, it was difficult for tools to determine
> the correct license due to incomplete or badly formatted license text.
> The SPDX solves this issue, assuming people can correctly spell
> "SPDX-License-Identifier" although this assumption is broken in some
> places.
>
> Since scripts/spdxcheck.py parses only lines that exactly matches to
> the correct tag, it cannot (should not) detect this kind of error.
>
> If the correct tag is missing, scripts/checkpatch.pl warns like this:
>
> WARNING: Missing or malformed SPDX-License-Identifier tag in line *
>
> So, people should notice it before the patch submission, but in reality
> broken tags sometimes slip in. The checkpatch warning is not useful for
> checking the committed files globally since large number of files still
> have no SPDX tag.
>
> Also, I am not sure about the legal effect when the SPDX tag is broken.
>
> Anyway, these typos are absolutely worth fixing. It is pretty easy to
> find suspicious lines by grep.
>
> $ git grep --not -e SPDX-License-Identifier --and -e SPDX- -- \
> :^LICENSES :^scripts/spdxcheck.py :^*/license-rules.rst
> arch/arm/kernel/bugs.c:// SPDX-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/phy/st/phy-stm32-usbphyc.c:// SPDX-Licence-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/pinctrl/sh-pfc/pfc-r8a77980.c:// SPDX-Lincense-Identifier: GPL 2.0
> lib/test_stackinit.c:// SPDX-Licenses: GPLv2
> sound/soc/codecs/max9759.c:// SPDX-Licence-Identifier: GPL-2.0
>
> Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Very nice catch, thanks! I'll go queue this up now.

greg k-h