Re: git: 30780c3f584a - stable/13 - README.md: correct GPL expansion

On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 11:33 AM Mark Millard via freebsd-current <
freebsd-current@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 2021-Dec-18, at 09:30, Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 17 Dec 2021 at 11:09, Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm confused, beyond just LGPL claims in the (fairly
> >> current) source code, but GPL more generally:
> >>
> >> # grep -rl "SPDX.*GPL" /usr/main-src/
> >
> > You need to exclude the ones with SPDX tags like:
> > SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR GPL-2.0
> >
> > but also note that this text in README.md is just documenting the
> > top-level gnu/ subdirectory.
>
> # grep -r "SPDX.*GPL" /usr/main-src/ | egrep -vi "(mit|bsd|Linux-OpenIB)"
> | grep -v sys/contrib/device-tree/ | more
> /usr/main-src/sys/gnu/gcov/gcc_4_7.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> /usr/main-src/sys/gnu/gcov/gcov_fs.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> /usr/main-src/sys/dts/include/dt-bindings/soc/qcom,tcsr.h:/*
> SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
>
> But . . .
>
> # grep -r "SPDX.*GPL" /usr/main-src/ | egrep -vi "(mit|bsd|Linux-OpenIB)"
> | grep sys/contrib/device-tree/ | wc
>     3104    9958  345089
>

Yea, that doesn't matter that much...  Those are generally not used for
tier 1 platforms, except
for some arm64 boards.  And when they are used, they create a separate work
(the .dtb files).
And that's even assuming these files are expressive enough to have enough
creative content
that a copyright could attach... It's not used at all the build kernels,
userland, etc (though one
does have an option to attach a dtb to a kernel, to be fair). And they are
all well marked with
SPDX tags, so we're not misrepresenting anything and the project's use of
them is in full
compliance with whichever GPL they are released under. Downstream users
will, as with
all license things, need to ensure their uses comply. There have been
various statements
about these files over the years which one should consult if one ships a
system with the
.dtb w/o the .dts sources to determine compliance measures necessary
(though the standard
GPL measures will work, some folks have disclaimed the need to do them for
their
.dts files, ymmv).

Warner