Re: [PATCH v3] MIPSr6/math: Use builtin fma and fmaf

[YunQiang Su <syq@debian.org>]

Maciej W. Rozycki <macro@orcam.me.uk> 于2024年6月8日周六 22:17写道：
>
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2024, YunQiang Su wrote:
>
> > >  Doesn't this need a copyright notice?
> > >
> >
> > There is no copyright notice in any math-use-builtins-*.h.
>
>  Existing files do not matter, it's the current interpretation of rules
> that does.  Correcting preexisting issues incurs effort someone has to
> undertake, so they may well stay around for a while; there are many of
> them.  New submissions need to be correct in all cases though.
>
> > I guess that we treat them as so straight forward, thus no copyright
> > notice is needed.
>
>  And who decides that a piece of code is "straightforward"?  We currently
> have these rules written down:
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 4. Creating files
>
>    * Don't create empty files
>    * Find new versions of the copyright headers to use as a template.
>    * Make sure the top line is descriptive.
>    * "Contributed by" statements are no longer used.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'd argue that iff a file consists solely of a #include_next directive, it
> might possibly skip the copyright header (though I think it would best be
> consulted by a lawyer anyway).  Otherwise if you argue that a piece of
> code is "straightforward" (i.e. legally insignificant, I suppose), then we
> need to draw a line somewhere.  We currently have it stated that:
>
> "Copyright assignment for commulative [sic!] changes by any one author of
> less than 15 lines do not require copyright assignment."
>

I don't think that the line count is the most important: some code is
quite short
while its logic is quite complex.

For this patch, I don't think that it has logic at all. It is just a
statement about the
FMA support of MIPS ISA documents.
I mean I doubt whether it can be protected by copyright.

> so by extension you could argue that your submission only has 13 lines and
> therefore *by itself* is not legally significant.  Then if someone changes
> the file in the future so that it has at least 2 lines more, then it will
> be their responsibility to add the copyright notice header at that time.
> But it could be easy to miss.  And then should we remove the header again
> if the file has shrunk with a later update?
>

Personally, I don't think/wish a short and *non-logic* code can be protected
by copyright, as anybody who may do something for it will write the
almost same code.
I don't think that their work is a copy paste.

>  I would argue that adding the the copyright notice right away is the
> correct approach in this case.
>
>   Maciej