RFC: abolishing enforcing per-file license headers (checklicenses/licensecheck)

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

I introduced licensecheck a few years ago to improve things for downstream Chromium packagers, e.g. Debian/Ubuntu.

I realized the ongoing friction for the Chromium project isn't worth it, and the interest among packagers seems to have decreased anyway.

Is there any concern about the removal?

Specifically, I'm referring to following code, which I'd remove any entries in src/testing/buildbot that make it run on main waterfall and CQ trybots:

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/tools/checklicenses/checklicenses.py?q=checklicenses.py&sq=package:chromium&l=1

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/testing/scripts/checklicenses.py?q=checklicenses.py&sq=package:chromium&l=1

I'd also remove "Handling licenses_check (checklicenses.py) failures" section of https://www.chromium.org/developers/adding-3rd-party-libraries .

Note that there are some other copyright-related scripts that were added by other people for other reasons, and they'd not be changed. The "Handling webview_licenses.py failures" part of above page would also stay.

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/tools/copyright_scanner/copyright_scanner.py?q=copyright_scanner&sq=package:chromium&l=1

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/android_webview/tools/webview_licenses.py?type=cs&q=webview_licenses.py&sq=package:chromium&l=1

Paweł

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

WebView no longer has android's downstream licence requirements. We have kept the WebView licence checker around on the assumption that someone thought that strict checking of licences was a good idea (for the project as a whole) and there's a bug open somewhere to rename it to indicate it isn't anything to do with WebView and run it on all bots. So, if we're changing the way we check licences, we should consider what to with this as well and not just leave it as-is.

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[Dale Curtis]

So long as we can keep using it within the ffmpeg repo, no objections.

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/third_party/ffmpeg/chromium/scripts/generate_gn.py?l=640

- dale

[Dirk Pranke]

We still need a mechanism to check and enforce that we're not linking in code to Chrome and the other shipped products

that we shouldn't be (i.e., we have the same need that ffmpeg does). 

I have crbug.com/46261 assigned to me to implement something smarter based on top of GN now that we're off GYP,

and it's possible that I'd like to re-use some of the checklicenses logic there (not sure yet, I'll probably look at this bug soon),

but otherwise I'm fine with removing the checklicenses step.

(I'm not sure if that bug is the same one torne@ was thinking of, but it sounds like the same need).

-- Dirk

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[Torne (Richard Coles)]

There's https://crbug.com/486158, https://crbug.com/546862, and https://crbug.com/569710 covering different parts of webview_licenses sucking.

So just to be clear on webview here:

1) the WebView team no longer require any WebView-specific special license enforcement, because we no longer check the WebView sources into the Android tree. We only have the same licensing requirements as Chrome and other shipped products now.

2) We would rather not be the owners/maintainers of the webview_licenses tool any more :)

3) The webview_licenses tool only still exists and gets run because we were under the impression that someone thought it was useful in general for chromium to have a strict license check of this kind - if this need is, or can be, satisfied by other tools, then it's fine to just go ahead and delete webview_licenses, or subsume parts of it into other tools, or whatever people want.

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[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

I've uploaded https://codereview.chromium.org/2312323002 as a starting point to stop running checklicenses.py on some Linux builders.

webview_licenses could be next - based on this thread it's not necessary and is annoying.

Usage of licensecheck.pl inside ffmpeg's generate_gn.py is fine. In fact, we may be able to get rid of some local patches to licensecheck, and possibly bring it more up to date.

Dirk, a smart mechanism in GN to be aware of licenses sounds like a great thing. It's https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=469261 , right?

Paweł

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[Dirk Pranke]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. <phajd...@chromium.org> wrote:

Dirk, a smart mechanism in GN to be aware of licenses sounds like a great thing. It's https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=469261 , right?

Yes.

-- Dirk

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

I've now uploaded https://codereview.chromium.org/2319093002 to stop running webview_licenses.

Paweł

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

I've also noticed tools/copyright_scanner , and I still get asked to review CLs related to it like https://codereview.chromium.org/2350233003 .

Is it still needed?

Paweł

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

I'm not sure. I thought it was some kind of common component between one or more of the things you already deleted, but I don't know for sure whether it also gets run some other way. Despite being listed as an OWNER for this and reviewing changes to the whitelist, I have no real clue how it's used :(

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

+mnaganov for more context (https://codereview.chromium.org/622493004)

It seems to me it was still related to webview, and so shouldn't be necessary now.

Paweł

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

[reposting mnaganov's reply to MLs]

Also uploaded https://codereview.chromium.org/2359053002 for review.

Paweł

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Mikhail Naganov <mnag...@chromium.org> wrote:

I think it's relevant for the entire project, not only for WebView -- to detect attempts of putting some third-party code outside of third-party directories.

But perhaps if we rely on reviewers to detect such things and the script becomes a hassle then we can get rid of it.