Re: [PATCH] tcg/LICENSE: Remove no-longer-true statement that TCG is BSD-licensed

[Ard Biesheuvel]

(uses Alex's working email address)

On Mon, 21 Oct 2019 at 21:52, Ard Biesheuvel <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2019 at 19:57, Laszlo Ersek <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > (+Ard, Alex)
> >
> > On 10/21/19 17:52, Richard Henderson wrote:
> > > On 10/21/19 7:58 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > >> Since 2008 the tcg/LICENSE file has not changed: it claims that
> > >> everything under tcg/ is BSD-licensed.
> > >>
> > >> This is not true and hasn't been true for years: in 2013 we
> > >> accepted the tcg/aarch64 target code under a GPLv2-or-later
> > >> license statement. We don't really consider the tcg
> > >> subdirectory to be a distinct part of QEMU anyway.
> > >>
> > >> Remove the LICENSE file, since claiming false information
> > >> about the license of the code is confusing, and update
> > >> the main project LICENSE file also to be clearer about
> > >> the license used by TCG.
> > >>
> > >> Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <address@hidden>
> > >> ---
> > >> This patch takes the simple approach of just documenting
> > >> the de-facto current reality; does anybody want to argue
> > >> for something else? Other possibilities I guess would be
> > >> specifically documenting tcg/aarch64 as an accidental
> > >> exception to the general licensing rule for tcg/, or even
> > >> trying to get it relicensed.
> > >>
> > >> Does having tcg/ be BSD-licensed gain the project anything?
> > >> From my point of view I don't really see it as a cleanly
> > >> separable module of code -- it's quite tightly integrated
> > >> with the rest of QEMU, including code in accel/tcg which
> > >> is variously GPL or LGPL.
> > >
> > > I think this is the best solution.  I've never been convinced that TCG can
> > > usefully be extracted and reused for something else.
> >
> > Side comment:
> >
> > Ard and Alex extracted TCG to run x86 PCIe UEFI option ROMs on aarch64
> > hardware.
> >
> > https://github.com/ardbiesheuvel/X86EmulatorPkg
> > https://kvmforum2017.sched.com/event/Bo0S/qemu-in-uefi-alexander-graf-suse
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxvAH1Q4Mx0
> >
> > If I remember correctly, they specifically picked a git commit hash that
> > was still purely BSD licensed.
> >
> > FWIW,
> > <https://github.com/ardbiesheuvel/X86EmulatorPkg/blob/master/LICENSE> is
> > not any BSD license, so I'm almost surely out of date on that aspect;
> > just wanted to confirm that TCG has been usefully extracted.
> >
>
> This commit has the background info
> https://github.com/ardbiesheuvel/X86EmulatorPkg/commit/552c44d2cbc778f3e53d6d3985a8787c7df99733