Our guidelines for patches [1] for Linux-wireless has been updated.

One section asks Linux-wireless developers to subscribe to the patch

guideline wiki page (section 2) and another which introduces the new

'Changes-licensed-under' (section 10).
Here I'll cover the new 'Changes-licensed-under' tag but please refer

to the link and subscribe to the page for the complete details and for

further changes.
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Based on the new guidelines posted by the SFLC on ''Maintaining

Permissive-Licensed Files in a GPL-Licensed Project: Guidelines for

Developers'' [2], specifically section 5, we are introducing a new tag

for use with patches which deal with files licensed under permissive

licenses (BSD, ISC) on Linux wireless in our larger GPL project, the

Linux kernel. The tag is Changes-licensed-under and can be used by

developers to clarify the intended license for their patch on

permissive licensed files. It is clear that not all changes qualify a

patch author for Copyright but a lot of patches do qualify an author

for copyright. If you want crystal clear details of what constitutes

as a copyrightable change, at least within the US and the EU, you can

refer to SFLC's ''Originality Requirements under U.S. and E.U.

Copyright Law'' [3].
Although some developers have a practice of implying their patches for

a permissive licensed file abides by the respective permissive license

of the file being patched, and although some changes are obviously not

copyrightable, we would like to ''err on the side of caution'', take

the advice from SFLC, and introduce Changes-licensed-under in order to

help the BSD family reap benefits of our contributions to permissive

licensed files.
The Changes-licensed-under tag should be put before the Signed-off-by

tag. Since this tag is used to cover changes under permissive licenses

example of possible licenses are 3-Clause-BSD, and ISC. If you are

making changes to multiple permissive licensed files then please

specify which license covers what files.
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For exa...
[ message continues ]

Please, keep this tagged SFLC-waving somewhere out of mainline.

Thank you.

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On Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:00:09 -0400
No, please don't down this legal rat hole. It would cause bullshit like

people submitting dual licensed patches to the scheduler or GPL only

patches to the ath5k or ACPI code.
Instead, add a section to Documentation/SubmittingPatches that clearly

states that all changes to a file are licensed under the same license

as the original file. I don't feel legally qualified to write the correct

wording.
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Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
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Precisely. Signed-off-by means the patch author already authorized

the patch to be applied. With the patch merged the conditions still

in the file (project etc) apply and not some obscure email tags.
If someone really wants to change licencing conditions then the
Current Documentation/SubmittingPatches:

        Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
        By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:
        (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I

            have the right to submit it under the open source license

                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

            indicated in the file; or

            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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Krzysztof Halasa

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