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licence: SchOS is GPL-2.0-or-later, no longer Apache-2.0

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Nexoniarz is the sole author and SchOS was never published under
Apache-2.0, so this is a straight relicence. LICENSE is the FSF GPLv2 text,
every first-party SPDX header moves to GPL-2.0-or-later, and NOTICE,
README.md, docs/licensing.md and the site say so. projects/schfs-linux
follows the rest of the tree.

The GPL gives copyleft: a fork has to ship its source. It also lifts the
old "Linux drivers, never" rule, since GPL-2.0-only code combines with
GPL-2.0-or-later. "Or later" leaves room for GPLv3, but one binary still
has to pick one version, so docs/licensing.md now keeps Apache-2.0 and
GPLv3 code out of the kernel to keep Linux code possible there. BSD
4-clause code goes from "avoid" to "no", because the advertising clause
is GPL-incompatible.

LDLS still ships no .ko. That boundary is now project policy rather than
a legal requirement, and ldls.md, devices.md and licensing.md section 6
say so. refmod declares license=GPL, and ldls-check passes (27 checks).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Nexoniarz 2026-10-22 08:48:45 +02:00
commit 26bca020b6
135 changed files with 959 additions and 689 deletions
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13
docs/architecture/devices.md
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@ -247,10 +247,11 @@ manager or equivalent, and SchOS will load it.
The licensing reasoning matters and is worth stating exactly, because it is
easy to get wrong in both directions:
- **Distribution is what triggers the GPL.** Shipping a GPL-2.0-only driver in
an Apache-2.0 image is what cannot be done — see [../licensing.md](../licensing.md)
§2. A user obtaining a driver themselves and loading it on their own machine
is their act, not ours, and is not a distribution by us.
- **Distribution is what triggers the GPL.** SchOS is GPL-2.0-or-later, so
shipping a GPL-2.0-only driver in an image is now *possible* — see
[../licensing.md](../licensing.md) §6 — but LDLS still does not, by policy. A
user obtaining a driver themselves and loading it on their own machine is
their act, not ours, and is not a distribution by us.
- **Implementing a loader is not copying.** Writing support for a module format
and a driver ABI from published documentation produces our own work. It is a
clean-room implementation, and it stays one only if it is written from
@ -259,8 +260,8 @@ easy to get wrong in both directions:
identifiers say.
So the rule for this subsystem is the same as everywhere else in the tree: the
loader is ours and Apache-2.0, what it loads is the user's business, and nothing
GPL ever enters an image we build. `RAMDISK_EXCLUDE` and `NOTPORTS` are the
loader is ours and GPL-2.0-or-later, what it loads is the user's business, and
no third-party module enters an image we build. `RAMDISK_EXCLUDE` and `NOTPORTS` are the
existing mechanisms for keeping that true mechanically rather than by intention.
---