1
linux/kernel
Greg Kroah-Hartman b24413180f License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license
Many source files in the tree are missing licensing information, which
makes it harder for compliance tools to determine the correct license.

By default all files without license information are under the default
license of the kernel, which is GPL version 2.

Update the files which contain no license information with the 'GPL-2.0'
SPDX license identifier.  The SPDX identifier is a legally binding
shorthand, which can be used instead of the full boiler plate text.

This patch is based on work done by Thomas Gleixner and Kate Stewart and
Philippe Ombredanne.

How this work was done:

Patches were generated and checked against linux-4.14-rc6 for a subset of
the use cases:
 - file had no licensing information it it.
 - file was a */uapi/* one with no licensing information in it,
 - file was a */uapi/* one with existing licensing information,

Further patches will be generated in subsequent months to fix up cases
where non-standard license headers were used, and references to license
had to be inferred by heuristics based on keywords.

The analysis to determine which SPDX License Identifier to be applied to
a file was done in a spreadsheet of side by side results from of the
output of two independent scanners (ScanCode & Windriver) producing SPDX
tag:value files created by Philippe Ombredanne.  Philippe prepared the
base worksheet, and did an initial spot review of a few 1000 files.

The 4.13 kernel was the starting point of the analysis with 60,537 files
assessed.  Kate Stewart did a file by file comparison of the scanner
results in the spreadsheet to determine which SPDX license identifier(s)
to be applied to the file. She confirmed any determination that was not
immediately clear with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

Criteria used to select files for SPDX license identifier tagging was:
 - Files considered eligible had to be source code files.
 - Make and config files were included as candidates if they contained >5
   lines of source
 - File already had some variant of a license header in it (even if <5
   lines).

All documentation files were explicitly excluded.

The following heuristics were used to determine which SPDX license
identifiers to apply.

 - when both scanners couldn't find any license traces, file was
   considered to have no license information in it, and the top level
   COPYING file license applied.

   For non */uapi/* files that summary was:

   SPDX license identifier                            # files
   ---------------------------------------------------|-------
   GPL-2.0                                              11139

   and resulted in the first patch in this series.

   If that file was a */uapi/* path one, it was "GPL-2.0 WITH
   Linux-syscall-note" otherwise it was "GPL-2.0".  Results of that was:

   SPDX license identifier                            # files
   ---------------------------------------------------|-------
   GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note                        930

   and resulted in the second patch in this series.

 - if a file had some form of licensing information in it, and was one
   of the */uapi/* ones, it was denoted with the Linux-syscall-note if
   any GPL family license was found in the file or had no licensing in
   it (per prior point).  Results summary:

   SPDX license identifier                            # files
   ---------------------------------------------------|------
   GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note                       270
   GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note                      169
   ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-2-Clause)    21
   ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause)    17
   LGPL-2.1+ WITH Linux-syscall-note                      15
   GPL-1.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note                       14
   ((GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause)    5
   LGPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note                       4
   LGPL-2.1 WITH Linux-syscall-note                        3
   ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR MIT)              3
   ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) AND MIT)             1

   and that resulted in the third patch in this series.

 - when the two scanners agreed on the detected license(s), that became
   the concluded license(s).

 - when there was disagreement between the two scanners (one detected a
   license but the other didn't, or they both detected different
   licenses) a manual inspection of the file occurred.

 - In most cases a manual inspection of the information in the file
   resulted in a clear resolution of the license that should apply (and
   which scanner probably needed to revisit its heuristics).

 - When it was not immediately clear, the license identifier was
   confirmed with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

 - If there was any question as to the appropriate license identifier,
   the file was flagged for further research and to be revisited later
   in time.

In total, over 70 hours of logged manual review was done on the
spreadsheet to determine the SPDX license identifiers to apply to the
source files by Kate, Philippe, Thomas and, in some cases, confirmation
by lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

Kate also obtained a third independent scan of the 4.13 code base from
FOSSology, and compared selected files where the other two scanners
disagreed against that SPDX file, to see if there was new insights.  The
Windriver scanner is based on an older version of FOSSology in part, so
they are related.

Thomas did random spot checks in about 500 files from the spreadsheets
for the uapi headers and agreed with SPDX license identifier in the
files he inspected. For the non-uapi files Thomas did random spot checks
in about 15000 files.

In initial set of patches against 4.14-rc6, 3 files were found to have
copy/paste license identifier errors, and have been fixed to reflect the
correct identifier.

Additionally Philippe spent 10 hours this week doing a detailed manual
inspection and review of the 12,461 patched files from the initial patch
version early this week with:
 - a full scancode scan run, collecting the matched texts, detected
   license ids and scores
 - reviewing anything where there was a license detected (about 500+
   files) to ensure that the applied SPDX license was correct
 - reviewing anything where there was no detection but the patch license
   was not GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note to ensure that the applied
   SPDX license was correct

This produced a worksheet with 20 files needing minor correction.  This
worksheet was then exported into 3 different .csv files for the
different types of files to be modified.

These .csv files were then reviewed by Greg.  Thomas wrote a script to
parse the csv files and add the proper SPDX tag to the file, in the
format that the file expected.  This script was further refined by Greg
based on the output to detect more types of files automatically and to
distinguish between header and source .c files (which need different
comment types.)  Finally Greg ran the script using the .csv files to
generate the patches.

Reviewed-by: Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
..
bpf License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
cgroup License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
configs ANDROID: binder: add hwbinder,vndbinder to BINDER_DEVICES. 2017-08-22 18:43:23 -07:00
debug
events License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
gcov License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
irq License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
livepatch License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
locking License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
power License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
printk License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
rcu License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
sched License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
time License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
trace License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
.gitignore
acct.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
async.c
audit_fsnotify.c
audit_tree.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
audit_watch.c audit/stable-4.13 PR 20170816 2017-08-16 16:48:34 -07:00
audit.c audit: update the function comments 2017-09-05 09:46:59 -04:00
audit.h ipc: mqueue: Replace timespec with timespec64 2017-09-03 20:21:24 -04:00
auditfilter.c
auditsc.c Merge branch 'work.ipc' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2017-09-14 17:37:26 -07:00
backtracetest.c
bounds.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
capability.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
compat.c semtimedop(): move compat to native 2017-07-15 20:46:47 -04:00
configs.c
context_tracking.c
cpu_pm.c PM / CPU: replace raw_notifier with atomic_notifier 2017-07-31 13:09:49 +02:00
cpu.c cpu/hotplug: Reset node state after operation 2017-10-21 16:11:30 +02:00
crash_core.c kdump: protect vmcoreinfo data under the crash memory 2017-07-12 16:26:00 -07:00
crash_dump.c
cred.c
delayacct.c
dma.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
elfcore.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
exec_domain.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
exit.c waitid(): Avoid unbalanced user_access_end() on access_ok() error 2017-10-20 15:32:54 -04:00
extable.c extable: Enable RCU if it is not watching in kernel_text_address() 2017-09-23 16:50:20 -04:00
fork.c kmemleak: clear stale pointers from task stacks 2017-10-13 16:18:33 -07:00
freezer.c
futex_compat.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
futex.c futex: Fix pi_state->owner serialization 2017-09-25 16:37:11 +02:00
groups.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
hung_task.c
irq_work.c
jump_label.c jump_label: Provide hotplug context variants 2017-08-10 12:28:59 +02:00
kallsyms.c kernel/kallsyms.c: replace all_var with IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_KALLSYMS_ALL) 2017-07-10 16:32:34 -07:00
kcmp.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
Kconfig.freezer
Kconfig.hz
Kconfig.locks
Kconfig.preempt
kcov.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
kexec_core.c x86/mm, kexec: Allow kexec to be used with SME 2017-07-18 11:38:04 +02:00
kexec_file.c kexec_file: adjust declaration of kexec_purgatory 2017-07-12 16:26:02 -07:00
kexec_internal.h License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
kexec.c kdump: protect vmcoreinfo data under the crash memory 2017-07-12 16:26:00 -07:00
kmod.c kmod: move #ifdef CONFIG_MODULES wrapper to Makefile 2017-09-08 18:26:51 -07:00
kprobes.c kprobes: Ensure that jprobe probepoints are at function entry 2017-07-08 11:05:35 +02:00
ksysfs.c kexec: move vmcoreinfo out of the kernel's .bss section 2017-07-12 16:25:59 -07:00
kthread.c kernel/kthread.c: kthread_worker: don't hog the cpu 2017-08-31 16:33:15 -07:00
latencytop.c
Makefile License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
memremap.c memremap: add scheduling point to devm_memremap_pages 2017-10-03 17:54:25 -07:00
module_signing.c
module-internal.h
module.c module: fix ddebug_remove_module() 2017-07-25 15:08:32 +02:00
notifier.c
nsproxy.c
padata.c
panic.c locking/refcounts, x86/asm: Implement fast refcount overflow protection 2017-08-17 10:40:26 +02:00
params.c kernel/params.c: improve STANDARD_PARAM_DEF readability 2017-10-03 17:54:26 -07:00
pid_namespace.c userns,pidns: Verify the userns for new pid namespaces 2017-07-20 07:43:58 -05:00
pid.c pids: make task_tgid_nr_ns() safe 2017-08-21 12:47:31 -07:00
profile.c
ptrace.c signal: Remove kernel interal si_code magic 2017-07-24 14:30:28 -05:00
range.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
reboot.c
relay.c
resource.c
seccomp.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
signal.c Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ebiederm/user-namespace 2017-09-11 18:34:47 -07:00
smp.c treewide: make "nr_cpu_ids" unsigned 2017-09-08 18:26:48 -07:00
smpboot.c watchdog/core, powerpc: Lock cpus across reconfiguration 2017-10-04 10:53:54 +02:00
smpboot.h License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
softirq.c
stacktrace.c
stop_machine.c
sys_ni.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
sys.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
sysctl_binary.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
sysctl.c Merge branch 'core-watchdog-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-10-06 08:36:41 -07:00
task_work.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
taskstats.c
test_kprobes.c
torture.c torture: Fix typo suppressing CPU-hotplug statistics 2017-07-25 13:04:45 -07:00
tracepoint.c
tsacct.c
ucount.c
uid16.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
umh.c kmod: split out umh code into its own file 2017-09-08 18:26:50 -07:00
up.c smp: Avoid using two cache lines for struct call_single_data 2017-08-29 15:14:38 +02:00
user_namespace.c userns,pidns: Verify the userns for new pid namespaces 2017-07-20 07:43:58 -05:00
user-return-notifier.c
user.c
utsname_sysctl.c
utsname.c
watchdog_hld.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
watchdog.c License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
workqueue_internal.h License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license 2017-11-02 11:10:55 +01:00
workqueue.c Merge branch 'for-4.14' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/wq 2017-09-06 21:59:31 -07:00