[coreboot] Long license headers (ANGER WARNING)

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 6:10 AM Patrick Georgi via coreboot <
coreboot at coreboot.org> wrote:

> 2015-03-04 14:58 GMT+01:00 Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se>:
> > I haven't gotten the impression that anyone is suggesting to remove
> > or even change any copyright notices.
> >
> > Copyright documents authorship (like git does too) but says nothing
> > about licensing terms.
> Section 1 of the GPLv2 contains: "keep intact all the notices that
> refer to this License".
> I'm not a lawyer or I'd have more interesting things to do than to
> argue on mailing lists, but that doesn't look quite as clear cut to
> me.
>
>

Peter, per Patrick's note here, and discussions I've had with people who
actually are real lawyers, who earn their money doing IP licensing, I think
you are quite wrong. We should not change the license text in the files
*unless it is done in consultation with the copyright holders*. The DoD,
DOE, and other US Gov't entities are very particular about the copyright
text as it appears in the file, and that it not be changed. Same with
companies I've dealt with, including Google.

If, however, you are secretly a lawyer too, (which would not surprise me
given your broad skillset), then let us know :-)

Also,  of course people proposed changing the license text, per Paul's
earlier comment:

"In the past Ron also disagreed on changing headers by Samsung – taken
from U-Boot I think – saying their lawyers drafted those and therefore
it should stay that way."

ron
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