Linux Kernel Enforcement Statement¶

As developers of the Linux kernel, we have a keen interest in how our software is used and how the license for our software is enforced. Compliance with the reciprocal sharing obligations of GPL-2.0 is critical to the long-term sustainability of our software and community.

Although there is a right to enforce the separate copyright interests in the contributions made to our community, we share an interest in ensuring that individual enforcement actions are conducted in a manner that benefits our community and do not have an unintended negative impact on the health and growth of our software ecosystem. In order to deter unhelpful enforcement actions, we agree that it is in the best interests of our development community to undertake the following commitment to users of the Linux kernel on behalf of ourselves and any successors to our copyright interests:

Notwithstanding the termination provisions of the GPL-2.0, we agree that it is in the best interests of our development community to adopt the following provisions of GPL-3.0 as additional permissions under our license with respect to any non-defensive assertion of rights under the license.

However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

Our intent in providing these assurances is to encourage more use of the software. We want companies and individuals to use, modify and distribute this software. We want to work with users in an open and transparent way to eliminate any uncertainty about our expectations regarding compliance or enforcement that might limit adoption of our software. We view legal action as a last resort, to be initiated only when other community efforts have failed to resolve the problem.

Finally, once a non-compliance issue is resolved, we hope the user will feel welcome to join us in our efforts on this project. Working together, we will be stronger.

Except where noted below, we speak only for ourselves, and not for any company we might work for today, have in the past, or will in the future.

Laura Abbott

Bjorn Andersson (Linaro)

Andrea Arcangeli

Neil Armstrong

Jens Axboe

Pablo Neira Ayuso

Khalid Aziz

Ralf Baechle

Felipe Balbi

Arnd Bergmann

Ard Biesheuvel

Tim Bird

Paolo Bonzini

Christian Borntraeger

Mark Brown (Linaro)

Paul Burton

Javier Martinez Canillas

Rob Clark

Kees Cook (Google)

Jonathan Corbet

Dennis Dalessandro

Vivien Didelot (Savoir-faire Linux)

Hans de Goede

Mel Gorman (SUSE)

Sven Eckelmann

Alex Elder (Linaro)

Fabio Estevam

Larry Finger

Bhumika Goyal

Andy Gross

Juergen Gross

Shawn Guo

Ulf Hansson

Stephen Hemminger (Microsoft)

Tejun Heo

Rob Herring

Masami Hiramatsu

Michal Hocko

Simon Horman

Johan Hovold (Hovold Consulting AB)

Christophe JAILLET

Olof Johansson

Lee Jones (Linaro)

Heiner Kallweit

Srinivas Kandagatla

Jan Kara

Shuah Khan (Samsung)

David Kershner

Jaegeuk Kim

Namhyung Kim

Colin Ian King

Jeff Kirsher

Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux Foundation)

Christian König

Vinod Koul

Krzysztof Kozlowski

Viresh Kumar

Aneesh Kumar K.V

Julia Lawall

Doug Ledford

Chuck Lever (Oracle)

Daniel Lezcano

Shaohua Li

Xin Long

Tony Luck

Catalin Marinas (Arm Ltd)

Mike Marshall

Chris Mason

Paul E. McKenney

Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo

David S. Miller

Ingo Molnar

Kuninori Morimoto

Trond Myklebust

Martin K. Petersen (Oracle)

Borislav Petkov

Jiri Pirko

Josh Poimboeuf

Sebastian Reichel (Collabora)

Guenter Roeck

Joerg Roedel

Leon Romanovsky

Steven Rostedt (VMware)

Frank Rowand

Ivan Safonov

Anna Schumaker

Jes Sorensen

K.Y. Srinivasan

David Sterba (SUSE)

Heiko Stuebner

Jiri Kosina (SUSE)

Willy Tarreau

Dmitry Torokhov

Linus Torvalds

Thierry Reding

Rik van Riel

Luis R. Rodriguez

Geert Uytterhoeven (Glider bvba)

Eduardo Valentin (Amazon.com)

Daniel Vetter

Linus Walleij

Richard Weinberger

Dan Williams

Rafael J. Wysocki

Arvind Yadav

Masahiro Yamada

Wei Yongjun

Lv Zheng

Marc Zyngier (Arm Ltd)