Re: [PATCH v3] LICENSES: Explicitly allow SPDX-FileCopyrightText

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Sun, Mar 01, 2026 at 02:40:55PM +0100, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> Sources already have SPDX-FileCopyrightText (~40 instances) and more
> appear on the mailing list, so document that it is allowed.  On the
> other hand SPDX defines several other tags like SPDX-FileType, so add
> checkpatch rule to narrow desired tags only to two of them - license and
> copyright.  That way no new tags would sneak in to the kernel unnoticed.
> 
> Cc: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> Cc: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
> Signed-off-by: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski@oss.qualcomm.com>
> 
> ---
> 
> Other way would be to remove SPDX-FileCopyrightText from existing files
> and disallow this, but one way or another we should be explicit about
> it.  Otherwise people will be sending more of these and each maintainer
> would need to make their own call.

Ack.

> Changes in v3:
> 1. Typo "or multiple"
> 
> Changes in v2:
> 1. Doc adjustments based on feedback from Greg and Laurent.
> 2. "unused" -> "unsupported"
> 3. Drop redundant blank line
> ---
>  Documentation/process/license-rules.rst | 7 +++++--
>  scripts/checkpatch.pl                   | 8 ++++++++
>  2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/process/license-rules.rst b/Documentation/process/license-rules.rst
> index 59a7832df7d0..b0176bb8a465 100644
> --- a/Documentation/process/license-rules.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/process/license-rules.rst
> @@ -63,8 +63,11 @@ License identifier syntax
>     The SPDX license identifier in kernel files shall be added at the first
>     possible line in a file which can contain a comment.  For the majority
>     of files this is the first line, except for scripts which require the
> -   '#!PATH_TO_INTERPRETER' in the first line.  For those scripts the SPDX
> -   identifier goes into the second line.
> +   '#!PATH_TO_INTERPRETER' in the first line.  For those scripts, the SPDX
> +   license identifier goes into the second line.
> +
> +   The license identifier line can then be followed by one or multiple
> +   SPDX-FileCopyrightText lines if desired.
>  
>  |
>  
> diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> index bec7930cdd66..e317cf2ffc58 100755
> --- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> +++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> @@ -3856,6 +3856,14 @@ sub process {
>  			     "Misplaced SPDX-License-Identifier tag - use line $checklicenseline instead\n" . $herecurr);
>  		}
>  
> +# check for unsupported SPDX file tags
> +		if ($rawline =~ /\bSPDX-.*:/ &&
> +		    $rawline !~ /\bSPDX-License-Identifier:/ &&
> +		    $rawline !~ /\bSPDX-FileCopyrightText:/) {
> +			WARN("SPDX_LICENSE_TAG",
> +			     "Unsupported SPDX tag\n" . $herecurr);

I'd write "nonallowed" instead of "unsupported", possibly because I may
not be familiar with the usage of "supported" in this acceptation. With
or without that change,

Acked-by: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>

> +		}
> +
>  # line length limit (with some exclusions)
>  #
>  # There are a few types of lines that may extend beyond $max_line_length:

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart