Re: [PATCH v4 1/7] kexec: add KEXEC_ELF

Thiago Jung Bauermann [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/kernel/kexec_elf_64.c b/kernel/kexec_elf.c
similarity index 71%
copy from arch/powerpc/kernel/kexec_elf_64.c
copy to kernel/kexec_elf.c
index ba4f18a43ee8..6e9f52171ede 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/kexec_elf_64.c
+++ b/kernel/kexec_elf.c

@@ -1,33 +1,10 @@
-/*
- * Load ELF vmlinux file for the kexec_file_load syscall.
- *
- * Copyright (C) 2004  Adam Litke (agl@us.ibm.com)
- * Copyright (C) 2004  IBM Corp.
- * Copyright (C) 2005  R Sharada (sharada@in.ibm.com)
- * Copyright (C) 2006  Mohan Kumar M (mohan@in.ibm.com)
- * Copyright (C) 2016  IBM Corporation
- *
- * Based on kexec-tools' kexec-elf-exec.c and kexec-elf-ppc64.c.
- * Heavily modified for the kernel by
- * Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauerman@linux.vnet.ibm.com>.
- *
- * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
- * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- * the Free Software Foundation (version 2 of the License).
- *
- * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
- * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
- * GNU General Public License for more details.
- */
+// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only

I may be wrong, but my understanding of the SPDX license identifier is
that it substitutes the license text (i.e., the last two paragraphs
above), but not the copyright statements. Is it ok to have a file with a
SPDX license identifier but no copyright statement?

Answering my own question: I just came accross commit b24413180f56
("License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no
license") which adds SPDX license identifiers to a lot of files without
any copyright statement so I conclude that it is indeed ok to not have
copyright statements in a file.

In this instance the new file is heavily based on the old one though, so
IMHO it makes sense for it to inherit the copyright statements from the
original file.

--
Thiago Jung Bauermann
IBM Linux Technology Center