RE: [PATCH 07/15] net/ena/base: update copyrights comments

["Brandes, Shai" <shaibran@amazon.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hemant Agrawal <hemant.agrawal@oss.nxp.com>
> Sent: Monday, July 8, 2024 7:09 AM
> To: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@amd.com>; Brandes, Shai
> <shaibran@amazon.com>
> Cc: dev@dpdk.org; Hemant Agrawal <hemant.agrawal@nxp.com>
> Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [PATCH 07/15] net/ena/base: update copyrights
> comments
> 
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> 
> On 08-07-2024 00:27, Ferruh Yigit wrote:
> > On 7/2/2024 3:46 PM, shaibran@amazon.com wrote:
> >> From: Shai Brandes <shaibran@amazon.com>
> >>
> >> copyright dates are not mandatory to be maintained, therefore the
> >> range of years was removed.
> >> In addition, the copyrights lines were separated into two comments.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Shai Brandes <shaibran@amazon.com>
> >> ---
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c                  | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.h                  | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_defs/ena_admin_defs.h  | 5 +++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_defs/ena_common_defs.h | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_defs/ena_eth_io_defs.h | 5 +++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_defs/ena_includes.h    | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_defs/ena_regs_defs.h   | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_eth_com.c              | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_eth_com.h              | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_plat.h                 | 4 ++--
> >>   drivers/net/ena/base/ena_plat_dpdk.h            | 4 ++--
> >>   11 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c
> >> b/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c index ad4f3f9431..5f46e692b3 100644
> >> --- a/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c
> >> +++ b/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c
> >> @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
> >> -/* SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
> >> - * Copyright (c) 2015-2020 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
> >> +/* SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause */
> >> +/* Copyright (c) Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
> >>    * All rights reserved.
> >>    */
> >>
> > Hi Shai,
> >
> > I don't know about implication of dropping the copyright year
> > altogether, we need to ask to an expert.
> >
> > What I know is, a copyright expires after some year, so to hold the
> > copyright, there needs to be a starting point. And people use ranges
> > to extend this copyright year.
> >
> >
> > Instead of removing the year altogether, it make sense to me to just
> > keep the initial year and don't add range later as code updated, this
> > also will be more consistent with rest of the code.
> > Let me drop this patch from the set, and learn more from the experts.
> > It can be included later, I don't think this is something urgent.
> >
> >
> > Another aspect is, the history of a source file can be acquired from
> > the pubic git repository, so when it is first merged, when updated,
> > all these information is available.
> > So this feels like no need to record these days in the source code
> > files but I don't know if these git repository metadata information is legally
> >   valid and accepted.
> >
> >
> > And I am not quite sure if it has really any value to worry about
> > copyright for a publicly available device driver code anyway, but this
> > is not my domain.
> 
> Hi Shai,
> 
>      Will you please just update the copyright year instead of removing the
> year completely?  e.g. 2015-2020, 2024 or 2015-2024
> 
> -Hemant
[Brandes, Shai] 
Hi Ferruh and Hemant, aws removed the copyrights' years range completely for all our open source drivers based on our legal team and the open source article that states that there is no need to provide years or ranges of years for copyright notices in an OSS project. 
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/copyright-notices-in-open-source-software-projects
leaving this patch out or using a different years range will create code difference between the dpdk driver and the HAL code it consumes, which is common to all ENA drivers (which is less maintainable.)
Thanks,
Shai