svn commit: r327005 - in head: sbin/ipfw sys/sys usr.sbin/watch

[Pedro Giffuni]

On 12/19/17 21:55, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 19, 2017, at 19:15, Rodney W. Grimes <freebsd at pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Author: pfg
>>>> Date: Tue Dec 19 22:40:16 2017
>>>> New Revision: 327005
>>>> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/327005
>>>>
>>>> Log:
>>>>   SPDX: These are fundamentally BSD-2-Clause.
>>>>
>>>>   They just omit the introductory line and numbering.
>>> I again must assert that it would be better to not apply an SPDX than to
>>> apply one that is not an exact match for the license.
>>>
>>>
>> Not being a lawyer, I would normally agree, however:
> This isnt about any legal issue.
>
>> 1) SPDX IDs are only advisory: we always keep the exact license text, which is what has legal value.
> And we should do our best to provide the most accurate advisory we can,
> and we know that this is not a direct copy of the BSD 2 clause, so making
> advice that it is, IMHO, would be poor advice.
>
>> 2) The license is detected by license scanners as BSD and it has two clauses so the description fits.
> And a human reading it sees it reads like a 2 clause but does not match a 2 clause exactly so
> how do I trust any of this SPDX stuff as being done with some ration of sanity.
>
>> FWIW, according to SPDX lawyers, the numbering is not relevant and it would appear to me that the phrase:
>>   "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:? doesn?t add any information to the two clauses, which read:
> Again, not a legal issue, an issue of this is not an exact BSD-2-Clause so I
> do not believe that we should tag it as such.  Basically if we are doing this
> "close enough" thing it means the SPDX tags are actually pretty useless for
> anyone trying to do a legal evaluation cause they are just going have to
> completly redo what was done in adding the SPDX tags, and if that is the
> case we should seriously consider just what value do these have in the
> tree?
>
>
Indeed .. after having the change reviewed by someone objective, I have 
reverted the change in r327040.

Thanks for speaking up!

Pedro.