From: David VomLehn on
Not looking to be flamed, but I gotta ask. The GPLv2 has the sentence:

You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

My understanding of kernel community protocol is that you only put change
info in the source file if you made a major change, not if you corrected
something minor. IIRC, I even saw a patch bounced, in part, because it had
a line of change info added for a minor fix. (Again, IIRC, it was accepted
when it was resubmitted as modified)

We've been sued a time or two, making our legal folk a bit sensitive and
they want developers to follow the GPL to the letter. Now, they're not
likely to post anything here, but I thought I might personally get some
sense of what the future might hold. And I'm confident I can look
forward to some clearly stated viewpoints.
--
David VL
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From: Randy Dunlap on
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:10:17 -0700 David VomLehn wrote:

> Not looking to be flamed, but I gotta ask. The GPLv2 has the sentence:
>
> You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
> stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
>
> My understanding of kernel community protocol is that you only put change
> info in the source file if you made a major change, not if you corrected
> something minor. IIRC, I even saw a patch bounced, in part, because it had
> a line of change info added for a minor fix. (Again, IIRC, it was accepted
> when it was resubmitted as modified)
>
> We've been sued a time or two, making our legal folk a bit sensitive and
> they want developers to follow the GPL to the letter. Now, they're not
> likely to post anything here, but I thought I might personally get some
> sense of what the future might hold. And I'm confident I can look
> forward to some clearly stated viewpoints.
> --
> David VL
> --

Yeah, we aren't lawyers here (or the ones who are here usually
don't post anything -- they are read-only). That makes these comments
worth what you paid for them.


a. Changelogs go into the (git) patch description, not in the source code.

b. Even if/when we put change comments in the source code, it's (usually) not
done for trivial changes.


---
~Randy
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