License project under terms of GPLv2

[danielocfb]

License the project under the terms of the GPLv2 license. Nobody knows what license the generated vmlinux.h files carry, so pessimistically assume they are a derivative of the kernel and license the project accordingly.

Closes: #9

[anakryiko]

bpftool, libbpf and generally all BPF ecosystem is dual licensed as

SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause)

Let's do that here as well. There is no reason to deviate.

[4ast]

This is wrong. vmlinux.h is auto generated file. You cannot add a license to it.

[danielocfb]

bpftool, libbpf and generally all BPF ecosystem is dual licensed as

SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause)

Let's do that here as well. There is no reason to deviate.

The kernel is license under GPLv2 + syscall exception. These header files contain internal kernel types that are, to the best of my knowledge, not covered by the exception. As such it is an entirely reasonable assumption that, because of GPLv2's nature, these files should be licensed the same way. We cannot just say willy nilly that this isn't the case without a good reason -- that's not how the GPL works. I haven't seen any such reason.

This is wrong. vmlinux.h is auto generated file. You cannot add a license to it.

Just because something is auto generated that doesn't make it unlicensable...

[4ast]

entirely reasonable assumption

it's not reasonable at all.

BTF is equivalent to dwarf. vmlinux.h is no different than llvm-dwarfdump vmlinux. You cannot slap a license on top of a dump.

[anakryiko]

@danielocfb tbh, I assumed you are adding license for the sake of licensing scripts under scripts/ + src/lib.rs. And for that I think GPL2+BSD-2 is the way to go.

As for vmlinux.h, I agree with @4ast, we can't just license text dump of some tool. DWARF/BTF and derivative dumps from them cannot be licensed. Just like objdump's output of vmlinux, and many other things like that.

[danielocfb]

You cannot slap a license on top of a dump.

Please provide a citation for this claim. By that argument, are you also saying that one can't license a binary produced by a compiler or where is the line? I think this is factually wrong. You can absolutely do that and it is being done with every closed source binary.

[4ast]

First link on google:
"
The output is a representation of facts. The dwarfdump utility translates the facts found in the DWARF debug sections of an object file into a human-readable format. Facts are not copyrightable, so the output itself has no license.
"

[danielocfb]

First link on google: " The output is a representation of facts. The dwarfdump utility translates the facts found in the DWARF debug sections of an object file into a human-readable format. Facts are not copyrightable, so the output itself has no license. "

In general "citation" refers to something that can actually be followed to and verified. So...a link perhaps?
Not even searching for this exact string yields any results for me.