[LEDE-DEV] License for DTS files

[Rafał Miłecki]

On 3 February 2017 at 12:29, Rafał Miłecki <zajec5 at gmail.com> wrote:
> In LEDE we have quite a lot of DTS files that hasn't been upstreamed.
> They often contain no licensing info.
>
> Upstream Linux maintainers prefer/require clear BSD-compatible
> license, see e.g.:
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/5/4/707
>
> Some people may not agree such files are copyrightable at all, but
> most of us are not layers (including upstream maintainers) so it's
> probably just easier to specify some license and be done with it.
>
> Could we require/ask new DTS files added to LEDE project to use
> BSD-compatible license? This would help upstreaming code if someone
> decides to do that.

As Linus pointed, I shouldn't generalize, BSD-compatible license is
clearly required/preferred by ARM maintainers, not all arch ones.

Using BSD-compatible license instead of GPL allows using the code in
BSD systems and proprietary bootloaders. Since we're talking about DTS
files it may be more acceptable that in case of standard drivers.

So if you're OK with that, it may be better (to simplify upstreaming
process) to use BSD-compatible license, e.g.
1) BSD 3-Clause License
2) ISC License

If you don't want to use BSD-compatible license, we still have some
chance to upstream GPL licensed DTS files.

-- 
Rafał