Kernel GPLv question-"Prominent Notice"
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From: David VomLehn on 28 Jul 2010 19:20 Not looking to be flamed, but I gotta ask. The GPLv2 has the sentence: You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. My understanding of kernel community protocol is that you only put change info in the source file if you made a major change, not if you corrected something minor. IIRC, I even saw a patch bounced, in part, because it had a line of change info added for a minor fix. (Again, IIRC, it was accepted when it was resubmitted as modified) We've been sued a time or two, making our legal folk a bit sensitive and they want developers to follow the GPL to the letter. Now, they're not likely to post anything here, but I thought I might personally get some sense of what the future might hold. And I'm confident I can look forward to some clearly stated viewpoints. -- David VL -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Randy Dunlap on 28 Jul 2010 19:30
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:10:17 -0700 David VomLehn wrote: > Not looking to be flamed, but I gotta ask. The GPLv2 has the sentence: > > You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices > stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. > > My understanding of kernel community protocol is that you only put change > info in the source file if you made a major change, not if you corrected > something minor. IIRC, I even saw a patch bounced, in part, because it had > a line of change info added for a minor fix. (Again, IIRC, it was accepted > when it was resubmitted as modified) > > We've been sued a time or two, making our legal folk a bit sensitive and > they want developers to follow the GPL to the letter. Now, they're not > likely to post anything here, but I thought I might personally get some > sense of what the future might hold. And I'm confident I can look > forward to some clearly stated viewpoints. > -- > David VL > -- Yeah, we aren't lawyers here (or the ones who are here usually don't post anything -- they are read-only). That makes these comments worth what you paid for them. a. Changelogs go into the (git) patch description, not in the source code. b. Even if/when we put change comments in the source code, it's (usually) not done for trivial changes. --- ~Randy *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ |