On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 03:51:56PM +0100, Szabolcs Nagy wrote:

The 05/12/2021 14:38, Robin Murphy wrote:

quoted

[ Dropping Kai Shen who is now bouncing, adding Szabolcs just in case ]
On 2021-05-12 14:28, Mark Rutland wrote:

quoted

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 05:12:31PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:

quoted

From: Sam Tebbs <redacted>

Import the latest version of the former Cortex Strings - now
Arm Optimized Routines - memcmp function based on the upstream
code of string/aarch64/memcmp.S at commit e823e3a from
https://github.com/ARM-software/optimized-routines

What's the licensing/copyright situation here?

Because below...

quoted

quoted

quoted

--- a/arch/arm64/lib/memcmp.S
+++ b/arch/arm64/lib/memcmp.S

@@ -1,247 +1,139 @@
  /* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only */

... this says GPL-2.0-only ....

quoted

  /*
- * Copyright (C) 2013 ARM Ltd.
- * Copyright (C) 2013 Linaro.
+ * Copyright (c) 2013-2020, Arm Limited.
   *
- * This code is based on glibc cortex strings work originally authored by Linaro
- * be found @
- *
- * http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~linaro-toolchain-dev/cortex-strings/trunk/
- * files/head:/src/aarch64/
+ * Adapted from the original at:
+ * https://github.com/ARM-software/optimized-routines/blob/master/string/aarch64/memcmp.S
   */

... but this referenced file says "SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT", and I
don't know when this relicensing is legitimate.

We were told that since the copyright was fully assigned back to Arm in the
move from Cortex Strings to Arm Optimized Routines, we are free to relicense
it as we see fit, so a GPLv2 submission to Linux was still fine.

yes, this code is fully owned by arm now, but the
licensing is not clear to an outside observer.

Thanks for confirming!

It would be good if we could note this in the comment and/or the commit
message, since otherwise this isn't clear to said outside observers.

arm optimized-routines uses MIT license since that
seemed to be widely accepted, but then we were asked
to contribute the code under BSD3, LLVM, GPLv2,...
which is a bit of a pain (since then arm has to get
involved, we wanted others to take the code without
us having to do anything).

Sure, that makes sense.

My main concern here is that we have the right to relicense this as
GPLv2, since that avoids any pain points that come from mixed licensing.

Thanks,
Mark.

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