• Dave Hansen's avatar
    Documentation: clarify driver licensing rules · 755a2f18
    Dave Hansen authored
    Greg has challenged some recent driver submitters on their license
    choices. He was correct to do so, as the choices in these instances
    did not always advance the aims of the submitters.
    
    But, this left submitters (and the folks who help them pick licenses)
    a bit confused. They have read things like
    Documentation/process/license-rules.rst which says:
    
    	individual source files can have a different license
    	which is required to be compatible with the GPL-2.0
    
    and Documentation/process/submitting-drivers.rst:
    
    	We don't insist on any kind of exclusive GPL licensing,
    	and if you wish ... you may well wish to release under
    	multiple licenses.
    
    As written, these appear a _bit_ more laissez faire than we've been in
    practice lately. It sounds like we at least expect submitters to make
    a well-reasoned license choice and to explain their rationale. It does
    not appear that we blindly accept anything that is simply
    GPLv2-compatible.
    
    Drivers appear to be the most acute source of misunderstanding, so fix
    the driver documentation first. Update it to clarify expectations.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
    Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
    Cc: H. Peter Anvin <h.peter.anvin@intel.com>
    Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200814145625.8B708079@viggo.jf.intel.comSigned-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
    755a2f18
submitting-drivers.rst 6.8 KB