SPDX tags in file?

[Mark Millard]

On 2017-Dec-6, at 7:57 PM, Steve Kargl <sgk at troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 09:17:06PM -0500, Pedro Giffuni wrote:
>> 
>>> It seems that the application of SPDX license tags
>>> has been automated and done without reviewing whether
>>> the tag is correct.  For example, the BSD-4-Clause
>>> tag has been placed in the files in lib/msun/bsdsrc.
>>> Given the UCB letter concerning removal of clauses
>>> 3 and 4, these files should probably have had the
>>> Copyright updated and a different SPDX clause applied.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Steve
>> 
>> The initial sweep was done manually, but as you might have noticed, it 
>> covered a lot of files and mistakes are certainly possible.
>> 
>> The idea at this time is/was not to replace licenses: I am not a lawyer 
>> but I think we may have to look at who has touched a file before doing 
>> any license change. That may be a complex process.
>> 
>> This said. checking for bsd-4-clause is a pretty good opportunity to 
>> review and modernize code. If the code comes from another BSD (and 
>> particularly NetBSD as I noticed during the sweep), it is likely 
>> upstream has updated the license as well and there may be interesting 
>> changes involved.
>> 
> 
> Not all revisions apply to all four files
> 
> r1573   rgrimes  BSD 4.4 Lite
> r8870   rgrimes  Trailing whitespace
> r84210  dillon   Add __FBSDID
> r92887  obrien   Fix SCM ID's
> r92917  obrien   Remove __P() usage.
> r93211  bde      Resurrect Lite1
> r97407  keramida Assume __STDC__
> r108533 schweikh Typos and whitespace
> r129312 stefanf  Remove some kludges (use C99 hexadecimal constant)
> r138924 das      Cosmetic changes only
> r138925 das      GC unused declaration
> r150318 bde      Fixed aliasing bugs in TRUNC()
> r152566 bde      Removed an unused declaration and style bugs
> r169209 bde      Document current (slightly broken) handling of special values
> r169212 bde      Fix tgamma() on some special args
> r176449 das      Eliminate some warnings
> r226414 das      Fix some non-standard variable declarations.
> r325966 pfg      spdx
> 
> If you don't count UCB as upstream (aka r1573), then FreeBSD is
> upstream.  Looking at NetBSD the commit message for b_tgamma.c
> is "Add tgamma{,f} from FreeBSD via  rudolf, netbsd at eq dot cz".
> OpenBSD is a little more complicated, but its initial version 
> appeared in 2008 while FreeBSD's appeard in 1994.
> 
> IMHO (non-lawyer) opinion, the only thing that might rise to the
> level of Copyright-able material would be r169212.  Bruce did not
> add his name as he has done elsewhere.
> 
> BTW, OpenBSD uses a 3-clause BSD license.

That prompted an old memory about newer code
for OpenBSD so I took a look. . .

https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html says:

ISC
The ISC copyright is functionally equivalent to a two-term BSD
copyright with language removed that is made unnecessary by the
Berne convention. This is the preferred license for new code
incorporated into OpenBSD. A sample license is available in the
file /usr/share/misc/license.template.


===
Mark Millard
markmi at dsl-only.net