On Thu, 2020-05-07 at 01:21 +0000, Mark Atwood via lists.spdx.org
wrote:

I just got this note from one of my developers.



Is he correct? Should we or someone send a patch to Linux project?

No. Look again: GPL-2.0+ is right at the bottom of the list under
"Deprecated Licence Identifiers".

James

My understanding from being on the linux-spdx mailing list is that
this is intentionally tolerated for existing SPDX-License-Identifier
notices because it was correct SPDX syntax under the earlier version
of the SPDX spec.

Richard

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 9:25 PM Mark Atwood via lists.spdx.org
<atwoodm=amazon.com@...> wrote:

I just got this note from one of my developers.



Is he correct? Should we or someone send a patch to Linux project?



..m





From: REDACTED

Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 8:26 AM
To: Atwood, Mark <atwoodm@...>
Subject: Invalid SPDX identifier in Linux source tree



Mark,

Sorry for the delay, I'm long overdue in forwarding this to you.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/include/uapi/linux/i2c-dev.h

Contains the following invalid SPDX identifier:

/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note */


The SPDX list of license identifiers (https://spdx.org/licenses/) does not include GPL-2.0+ in any form. The closest would (presumably) be GPL-2.0-or-later.

---

--
Richard Fontana
Senior Commercial Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.
+1 212 689-4350 (mobile)

~ Kate Stewart [2020-05-07 03:37 +0200]:

Kernel community still recognizes GPL-2.0+ as valid, although we've
deprecated it.
The header quoted is fine.

Same goes for GPL-2.0 and the like.

The conventions are documented in the kernel community trees, and
the intention
is when all the files have SPDX-License-Identifier, to do a global cleanup.

Advice at this point is to stick with the pattern used in the kernel.

That's understandable, and a reasonable workflow.

Is there any schedule for the completion of the addition of license
identifiers and copyright notices? A quick `reuse lint` revealed the
following stats:

* Files with copyright information: 40292 / 67928
* Files with license information: 49815 / 67928

Best,
Max

--
Max Mehl - Programme Manager - Free Software Foundation Europe
Contact and information: https://fsfe.org/about/mehl | @mxmehl
Become a supporter of software freedom: https://fsfe.org/join