On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Doug Ledford <dledf...@redhat.com> wrote: > > The linux kernel as a whole is, but individual files still retain their > separate copyright, they don't loose it just because they are shipped as > part of the larger kernel.
.. they do lose it if they have GPL'd code merged into them. We do generally try pretty hard to respect dual licensing, though, just to make it easy to keep drivers that are intentionally shared with other projects still sharable. That said, that is only true for individual drivers that started out that way. I missed the first part of the private discussion, but "new files into the subsystem" does not sound like that case, and them being GPL-only is pretty much the norm. That is particularly true if that new code came from other places in the kernel (or other GPLv2 projects), where we don't even have a choice. In other words: - I _do_ heavily prefer that we keep dual-licensed drivers dual-licensed. It's not a _legal_ requirement, but it's certainly a matter of being polite. If the original author of a driver dual-licensed it (or licensed it under something like a two-clause BSD license that can be converted to GPLv2), it's just bad form to ignore that original license. - the dual-license thing is _particularly_ true if the other license is actively used by developers who actually give back. If it's some kind of "we want to keep it dual-licensed without helping maintain it", I honestly don't give a shit any more. IOW, if the people doing all the heavy lifting work on a particular file are GPL-only, then at that point there is nobody to be polite to any more. Not knowing the details, I have a hard time making any sane judgement call. Linus