svn commit: r356142 - in head/sys: dev/ofw sys

[Pedro Giffuni]

On 2019-12-27 23:24, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> [ Charset UTF-8 unsupported, converting... ]
>> On 2019-12-27 22:16, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
>>>> Author: pfg
>>>> Date: Sat Dec 28 02:58:30 2019
>>>> New Revision: 356142
>>>> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/356142
>>>>
>>>> Log:
>>>>   SPDX: update some tags with two licenses.
>>>>
>>>> Modified:
>>>>   head/sys/dev/ofw/openfirm.h
>>>>   head/sys/sys/sched.h
>>>>
>>>> Modified: head/sys/dev/ofw/openfirm.h
>>>> ==============================================================================
>>>> --- head/sys/dev/ofw/openfirm.h	Sat Dec 28 02:11:41 2019	(r356141)
>>>> +++ head/sys/dev/ofw/openfirm.h	Sat Dec 28 02:58:30 2019	(r356142)
>>>> @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
>>>>  /*	$NetBSD: openfirm.h,v 1.1 1998/05/15 10:16:00 tsubai Exp $	*/
>>>>  
>>>>  /*-
>>>> - * SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-4-Clause
>>>> + * SPDX-License-Identifier: (BSD-4-Clause AND BSD-2-Clause-FreeBSD)
>>>>   *
>>>>   * Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 Wolfgang Solfrank.
>>>>   * Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 TooLs GmbH.
>>>>
>>>> Modified: head/sys/sys/sched.h
>>>> ==============================================================================
>>>> --- head/sys/sys/sched.h	Sat Dec 28 02:11:41 2019	(r356141)
>>>> +++ head/sys/sys/sched.h	Sat Dec 28 02:58:30 2019	(r356142)
>>>> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
>>>>  /*-
>>>> - * SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-4-Clause
>>>> + * SPDX-License-Identifier: (BSD-4-Clause AND BSD-2-Clause-FreeBSD)
>>>>   *
>>>>   * Copyright (c) 1996, 1997
>>>>   *      HD Associates, Inc.  All rights reserved.
>>>>
>>> This situation should not of occured, and leads to an ambigous license state.
>> It actually happens a lot (I mean two or more licenses in the same
>> file): SPDX explicitly uses AND (not OR) for cases like this.
>>
>>> What code is under license 2 clause and what under 4 clause? 
>> Anyone redistributing the file has to respect both licenses. If you are
>> lucky enough to have access to version control you may be able to
>> discern the author and the corresponding license, otherwise you are
>> trapped with both.
> So the 2 clause add is null, so why have it there?

So that eventually, when the project gets to a point where sufficient
part of the code is rewritten they can opt to change the license to the
simpler form. There are ways to relicense projects gradually, and its
nothing new, in fact it is very much in the BSD spirit to gradually
replace more restricted UNIX code.

It may be a long shot but it has happened on other projects as well:
libdialog (in our tree) was rewritten and relicensed from GPL to LGPL.


>>> It looks to me as if this was done by Jeff Robinson as the 2 clause is
>>> attached to his copyright and we should probably just ask him to relax
>>> that back to the files existing 4 clause license, and or go after Greg
>>> Ansley of HD associtates to get them to relax the 4 clause.
>>>
>> No, Jeff (or anyone else, as I said there are many cases in our tree) is
>> entitled to choose his own license as long as it is compatible with the
>> pre-existing licensing.
> I was specifically sighting this one file, sys/sys/sched.h.
>
> Actually that might be a grey area, no place does the BSD license grant
> you rights to modify the terms of the license, and that is in effect
> what adding this second license does.

No one is modifying the original license: it is there and applies to the
original code.


> You can choose your own license for original work, sure, but obliterating
> parts of an existing license by applying a second license which is in
> conflict is probably a poor idea.


We don't do that at all: pretty clearly there is no conflict between
both licenses as you can comply with both.

Pedro.