Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [hbelusca] 74698: [USETUP]: Minor fixes & simplifications: - Remove a redundant NtClose call; - Return failure if NtQuerySymbolicLinkObject fails; - Use RTL_CONSTANT_STRING and RtlInitEmptyUnicodeS...

[Colin Finck]

[e-mail] wrote:
> -/*
> ReactOS kernel
> Copyright (C) 2002 ReactOS Team
> 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; either version 2 of the License, or
> (at your option) any later version.
> 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.
> You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along
> with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,

Inc.,
> 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
> */
>
> /*
> COPYRIGHT:       See COPYING in the top level directory
> PROJECT:         ReactOS text-mode setup

You're taking away the information that this file is licensed under
GPLv2 or any later version (as opposed to GPLv2-only, what some
developers prefer).
Also the entire license information is lost when this file is used as
part of a different source tree.

I have visited a seminar by our friend Nuno Brito last week, who has
founded a company that deals with such topics (www.triplecheck.tech).
There are some simple best practices we can apply here to get consistent
and useful headers once and for all.
The first would be using the established SPDX license identifiers from
https://spdx.org/licenses (here: "GPL-2.0+"). This would also make our
source files easily scannable by tools to get an overview of all
licenses involved in our code and imported third-party components.

If you or someone else is interested in working on this, let's draft a
universal header for our files that is compatible with SPDX.
Otherwise, I will have a look when there's more time..

Cheers,

Colin

[Hermès BÉLUSCA-MAÏTO]

Hi Colin,
But then, why do we have these ">   * COPYRIGHT:       See COPYING in the top level directory" lines in all our code headers then?
Is it because COPYING is actually just the GPLv2 (which seems to be the case)? Would it then be preferable to add this in the main (or another) COPYING file so that we can reuse these conditions elsewhere instead of cluttering the ROS code with these headers (that are put everywhere)? Your propositions that you're mentioning at the end of your mail sound interesting.

I'm ofc ready to put the notice back in the file.

Thanks for the info,
Hermès

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Ros-dev [mailto:[e-mail]] De la part de Colin Finck
Envoyé : mercredi 31 mai 2017 10:23
À : 'ReactOS Development List'
Objet : Re: [ros-dev] [ros-diffs] [hbelusca] 74698: [USETUP]: Minor fixes & simplifications: - Remove a redundant NtClose call; - Return failure if NtQuerySymbolicLinkObject fails; - Use RTL_CONSTANT_STRING and RtlInitEmptyUnicodeS...

[e-mail] wrote:
> -/*
> ReactOS kernel
> Copyright (C) 2002 ReactOS Team
> 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; either version 2 of the License, or
> (at your option) any later version.
> 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.
> You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along
> with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,

Inc.,
> 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
> */
>
> /*
> COPYRIGHT:       See COPYING in the top level directory
> PROJECT:         ReactOS text-mode setup

You're taking away the information that this file is licensed under
GPLv2 or any later version (as opposed to GPLv2-only, what some developers prefer).
Also the entire license information is lost when this file is used as part of a different source tree.

I have visited a seminar by our friend Nuno Brito last week, who has founded a company that deals with such topics (www.triplecheck.tech).
There are some simple best practices we can apply here to get consistent and useful headers once and for all.
The first would be using the established SPDX license identifiers from https://spdx.org/licenses (here: "GPL-2.0+"). This would also make our source files easily scannable by tools to get an overview of all licenses involved in our code and imported third-party components.

If you or someone else is interested in working on this, let's draft a universal header for our files that is compatible with SPDX.
Otherwise, I will have a look when there's more time..

Cheers,

Colin

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