Hi Tom, ________________________________ From: Tom Rini Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 6:16 AM To: Wolfgang Denk Cc: Aaron Williams; Daniel Schwierzeck; u-boot@lists.denx.de Subject: Re: [EXT] Re: Cavium/Marvell Octeon Support
On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 09:33:35AM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote: > Dear Aaron, > > In message <5376617.97hUrJXovB@flash> you wrote: > > > > > Again you don't answer my question. Why do you need a special new > > > API for such code? Why do you not just link that code with the rest > > > of U-Boot? > > > > The code in question that is calling the API is not GPL and hence cannot be > > linked with U-Boot though the phy code is GPL. > > Ouch. I was afraid to hear that. > > Please be aware that your newly created API does NOT implement a GPL > license exception. the only interface that allows for non-GPL code > to be run under control of U-Boot is the standalone program > interface, which is intentionally very restricted. > > In other words: what you are doing here is a clear (and intentional, > which makes it even worse) GPL license violation. > > > > It has been mentioned before, but just to be sure: this code which > > > uses your new API is licensed under a GPLv2 conforming lincense? > > > > > There should be no need. None of the code is linked against U-Boot, either > > at > > compile time nor at runtime. The application doesn't even know where it is > > located except by looking for a named block of memory. > > It does not have to be linked. You access internal interfaces of > U-Boot that have not been exported for non-GPL use, so your code > still has to be licensed under GPLv2 or a compatible license. I'm just following up to say that I agree with Wolfgang here. Sorry for the broken formatting (our IT department forces the Outhouse web client). I think there is some misunderstanding here. All of the code we include in U-Boot IS GPL or GPL compatible, including the API. "Even though U-Boot in general is covered by the GPL-2.0/GPL-2.0+, this does *not* cover the so-called "standalone" applications that use U-Boot services by means of the jump table provided by U-Boot exactly for this purpose - this is merely considered normal use of U-Boot, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work"." No part of U-Boot is included in these applications and no application code is included in U-Boot. We DO have SDK files used in U-Boot, but the SDK files are under a BSD-like license, basically do whatever you want with the code but don't hold us responsible. The SDK code is also used in stand-alone applications as well as the Linux kernel, where derivatives were upstreamed long-ago. In any event, I think at this point we can remove this support. I don't think it's used any longer. It also looks like EFI does allow for vendor defined services. I hadn't looked at this code for a while but looking at it again it also appears the phy code has been removed. I think the remaining code for QLM configuration could be modified to just use a hook from some environment variables, removing this issue entirely. -- Tom Regards, Aaron _______________________________________________ U-Boot mailing list U-Boot@lists.denx.de https://lists.denx.de/listinfo/u-boot
