Concern about arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c

Concern about arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c

[He Zhe]

Hello maintainers,

There is no "SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0" in arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c
and the following copyright is found.
"
Copyright (C) 1997 by
Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts.
All rights reserved.
"

Does this conflict with GPLv2? Anything else we need to know when using this as opensource software?

Thanks,
Zhe

Re: Concern about arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c

[Tobias Klausmann]

Hi! 

On Fri, 07 May 2021, He Zhe wrote:
> There is no "SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0" in arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c
> and the following copyright is found.
> "
> Copyright (C) 1997 by
> Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts.
> All rights reserved.
> "

That file is ancient (I reckon it's at least two decades old) and
looks like a wholesale include of a DEC/Digital .h file for that
particular chip. Since we didn't have DCOs or anything like that
back then, I am unsure what the license (if any) actually is.

It's even difficult to figure out when (and by who) it was first
committed. The oldest reference in a grafted-together git repo I
could find was from 2.1.88. 

Best,
Tobias

-- 
/* panic??  These should never occur in our application. */
        linux-2.6.6/drivers/scsi/aic7xxx/aiclib.c

Re: Concern about arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c

[He Zhe]

Kindly ping.

Zhe

On 5/7/21 4:30 PM, He Zhe wrote:
> Hello maintainers,
>
> There is no "SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0" in arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c
> and the following copyright is found.
> "
> Copyright (C) 1997 by
> Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts.
> All rights reserved.
> "
>
> Does this conflict with GPLv2? Anything else we need to know when using this as opensource software?
>
> Thanks,
> Zhe

Re: Concern about arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c

[Matt Turner]

On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 1:31 AM He Zhe <zhe.he@windriver.com> wrote:
>
> Hello maintainers,
>
> There is no "SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0" in arch/alpha/kernel/smc37c669.c
> and the following copyright is found.
> "
> Copyright (C) 1997 by
> Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts.
> All rights reserved.
> "
>
> Does this conflict with GPLv2? Anything else we need to know when using this as opensource software?

Unless you're using a DEC Alpha CPU, you're not using this code.