kernel-spdx-ids

README

SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later

kernel-spdx-ids

kernel-spdx-ids can do the following:

1. optionally obtain and unpack a Linux® kernel source tarball
2. scan it for SPDX® short-form license IDs
3. produce a license report
4. optionally produce a corresponding SPDX document

Step 1 is optional. You can also download and unpack the kernel yourself. See Sample usage below.

Steps 2-4 are basically just a wrapper around functionality provided by spdx/tools-golang.

Please note that this is NOT performing any sort of license scanning, beyond looking for SPDX short-form license IDs. Licenses will not be detected for kernel source files that do not contain SPDX-License-Identifier tags.

For related information, see:

• Linux kernel licensing rules
• SPDX short-form license IDs
• SPDX license list

Usage

Sample usage

1. Download and unpack version 4.18 of the kernel at, e.g., /tmp/linux-4.18/
2. go run kernel-spdx-ids.go -v 4.18 -p /tmp/linux-4.18 -s ./linux-4.18.spdx

Flags

go run kernel-spdx-ids.go with the following parameters:

• -v <version>, e.g. -v 4.18: required. kernel version to scan.
• -d: optional. if included, will download the kernel tarball of the version specified in the -v flag.
  • NOTE: May not work correctly on macOS systems. The kernel tarball will download correctly, but the unpacker will fail because it crashes on files in the same directory that have the same case-insensitive filename.
• -p <path>, e.g. -p /path/to/kernel/: required. path to the kernel source directory to be scanned. if -d is present, this is also where the kernel tarball will be unpacked after downloading.
• -s <spdx-path>, e.g. -s linux-4.18.spdx: optional. destination path to output SPDX file.

>= 4.x kernels only

Currently it assumes you are looking for a 4.x or higher kernel. To my knowledge, pre-4.x kernels did not contain SPDX short-form license IDs (at least not in significant number).

Contributing

Code contributions, PRs, issues, etc. are welcome. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Licenses

You may use kernel-spdx-ids under your choice of:

• Apache License, version 2.0 (Apache-2.0); OR
• GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later (GPL-2.0-or-later).

Trademarks

SPDX is a registered trademark of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.