Re: [PATCH v39 11/24] x86/sgx: Add SGX enclave driver

[Jarkko Sakkinen]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 09:40:52AM -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 10/5/20 8:02 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 05:23:45PM +0300, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> >> [*] One thing I've been wondering for a long time is that, why new code
> >> should have the copyright platters in the first place? I get it for
> >> pre-Git era but now there is a cryptographic log of authority.
> > Go talk to your corporate lawyers about this, it is one of the most
> > common cargo-cult patterns around :)
> 
> For this patch, though, it seems like we should just update the dates
> instead of removing them.

Already done. I updated them yesterday as:

  Copyright(c) 2016-20 Intel Corporation.

Changing from '//' to '/* ... */' is not yet.

> If I look at the last 1000 "^+.*Copyright" lines added to the kernel,
> 997 of them have a year.  So, weird or not, it's a pretty standard
> convention.  We'd need a slightly more broad conversation before we
> decide to nix these dates.
> 
> Pure speculation: Copyright protection, at least in the US, is not
> forever.  I _think_ it's 75 years or something.  That protection starts
> when the work is created and is independent of when it gets merged into
> Linux.  So, if we did something weird like merge a driver written 10
> years ago, it would only be protected for 65 more years after we merge
> it.  In other words, git history _might_ be irrelevant for copyright
> protection.

/Jarkko