Microsoft DevCon - OK to redistribute?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:

https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon

The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All Rights
Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:

https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE

So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good enough
for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from Microsoft?)

This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:

https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60

Rich.

[Neal Gompa]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 5:51 AM Richard W.M. Jones via legal
 wrote:
> We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon
>
> The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All Rights
> Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
> repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE
>
> So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good enough
> for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from Microsoft?)
>
> This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60

Has anyone tried sending a pull request to add the licensing
information to the headers to all the files in the repository? If they
accept that, it could resolve the issue.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 06:03:23AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 5:51 AM Richard W.M. Jones via legal
>  wrote:
> > We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:
> >
> > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon
> >
> > The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All Rights
> > Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
> > repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:
> >
> > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE
> >
> > So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good enough
> > for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from Microsoft?)
> >
> > This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:
> >
> > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60
>
> Has anyone tried sending a pull request to add the licensing
> information to the headers to all the files in the repository? If they
> accept that, it could resolve the issue.

I guess we could have something that would add an SPDX line, eg
this sort of patch:

Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
+SPDX-License-Identifier: MS-PL

For our purposes we'd only need it for files under devcon/

Rich.

[Neal Gompa]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 6:19 AM Richard W.M. Jones  wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 06:03:23AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 5:51 AM Richard W.M. Jones via legal
> >  wrote:
> > > We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon
> > >
> > > The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All Rights
> > > Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
> > > repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE
> > >
> > > So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good enough
> > > for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from Microsoft?)
> > >
> > > This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60
> >
> > Has anyone tried sending a pull request to add the licensing
> > information to the headers to all the files in the repository? If they
> > accept that, it could resolve the issue.
>
> I guess we could have something that would add an SPDX line, eg
> this sort of patch:
>
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
> +SPDX-License-Identifier: MS-PL
>
> For our purposes we'd only need it for files under devcon/

If you can easily do it for all files, that makes it considerably more
likely to get it merged.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Here's the SPDX pull request:

https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/pull/1335

It requires agreeing to a CLA in order to complete the pull request
which may also be an issue.

Rich.

[Neal Gompa]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 8:18 AM Richard W.M. Jones  wrote:
> Here's the SPDX pull request:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/pull/1335
>
> It requires agreeing to a CLA in order to complete the pull request
> which may also be an issue.

I would have guessed Red Hat has a CLA on file with Microsoft since
Red Hatters have contributed to the Azure stuff in the Microsoft
GitHub organization.

[Michel Lind]

On Mon, 2025-11-10 at 11:19 +0000, Richard W.M. Jones via legal wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 06:03:23AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 5:51 AM Richard W.M. Jones via legal
> >  wrote:
> > > We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon
> > >
> > > The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All
> > > Rights
> > > Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
> > > repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE
> > >
> > > So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good
> > > enough
> > > for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from
> > > Microsoft?)
> > >
> > > This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60
> >
> > Has anyone tried sending a pull request to add the licensing
> > information to the headers to all the files in the repository? If
> > they
> > accept that, it could resolve the issue.
>
> I guess we could have something that would add an SPDX line, eg
> this sort of patch:
>
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
> +SPDX-License-Identifier: MS-PL
>
> For our purposes we'd only need it for files under devcon/

Isn't "All rights reserved" going to conflict with MS-PL though?
Perhaps that should also be removed if you submit a PR

Best regards,

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 5:51 AM Richard W.M. Jones  wrote:
> We're thinking of using the DevCon tool inside virt-v2v:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/setup/devcon
>
> The license on the files looks like Microsoft proprietary ("All Rights
> Reserved", no other information).  However the license of the
> repository as a whole is MS-PL which is on the Allowed list:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/blob/main/LICENSE
>
> So I'm really looking for an opinion on whether this is good enough
> for Fedora, or if we need to get some clarification (from Microsoft?)
>
> This was asked about before, and not really answered clearly:
>
> https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60

Late to this discussion but I think it's reasonable from all this
information to assume the license of the devcon files is MS-PL,
particularly given this response to the issue Jilayne opened in 2016:
https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/issues/60#issuecomment-2....
as well as the maintainer's response to the SPDX-License-Identifier
pull request (regardless of whether they act on that).

Richard