[LEDE-DEV] License for DTS files

[John Crispin]

On 09/02/2017 18:18, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> 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.
> 

can you add a wiki page (or ask Richb to help doing so) which has the
text that should be used and a short text explaining why ? we can then
just point people at that wiki page when we get new dts files.

	John