Re: [Qemu-devel] The QEMU Accelerator Module

[Karel Gardas]

Tom,

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005, Tom Marble wrote:

> Fabrice Bellard wrote:
>
> > KQEMU is _not_ open source as the rest of QEMU. It is a proprietary
> > kernel module (read the LICENSE file) and will stay so until a gentle
> > company decides to subsidy the QEMU project.
>
> I'd like to make an appeal that KQEMU be licensed under the GPL.
>
> I'm not going to try to roll out a general FOSS position statement, but
> speak from a more practical level:
> - This technology is extremely important for faciliting automated
>   testing of the full (open) stack (including BIOS, ACPI, storage,
>   graphics, OS, swsusp).  And that testing is vital to the continuing quality
>   and vibrance of the entire stack.
> - non-GPL kernel modules will taint the kernel and completely
>   change the trajectory of the technology (it's support, innovation,
>   evolution, etc.)
> - Clearly Fabrice is (currently) in the comfortable position of
>   being the Benevolent Dictator ( 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator ).
>   I'm sure that's a position that could lead to speaking engagements,
>   books, consulting and other forms of monetization which
>   are quite compatible with the GPL.
>
> Is KQEMU valuable?  Absolutely!  Could it be proprietary?  Of course
> (vis VMware).  In this strange calculus of open source, as counterintuitive
> as it seems, I'm convinced that it can be even *more* valuable as
> GPL technology (to the community) and more valuable to Fabrice
> personally.  While there may be many shades of 'open' (e.g. blender)
> I'm sure that that community would be much more productive
> with a GPL license and consequently would provide much more
> enthusiastic support of whatever Fabrice needs.
>
> I'm sure everyone would be willing to help Googlebomb and /.
> Qemu, right?  (Or better yet, help make KQEMU *even better*
> through many eyes so that it can really reach a new level of success).

I think that you makes your appeal on the wrong side. Please read
Fabrice's note above. You should rather contact your Linux distribution
vendor and try to convience it to sponsor kqemu development and switch to
GPL. You can also contact some other linux friendly companies like IBM/HP
to do the same.

I'm afraid you are not right with your preassure to how much this
technology is important. No, it is not important for testing of
BIOS/ACPI/kernel etc. It's just very important for end user because of
possible (as I hope) performance benefit.

Please consider how Fabrice is really nice to Qemu community. He makes the
core of kqemu free (as a beer) and just limits its _redistribution_. I can
imagine, he also could make it completely proprietary and force you to
spend $$$ for its download. So if I understand this message right, it is
just to Linux commercial distributors: `Would you like to distribute
_fast_ Qemu? OK, so please pay for its development'. Please consider that
the same these vendors do for many other applications, even core like
kernel, gcc, binutils, wine/crossover (which is even wholy proprietary)
and such. Linux vendors seems to pay for every important technology which
makes them more competitive in linux distributions market, so why also
don't pay for Qemu a bit?

Once again I would like to thank Fabrice for making kqemu enough free that
Qemu user community can benefit from it and provide some bugreports, which
hopefully will be also benefit to kqemu itself. I hope that members of
Qemu community will understand this Fabrice's step and will support him in
finding appropriate company willing to pay for (K)Qemu's development.

Cheers,
Karel
--
Karel Gardas                  address@hidden
ObjectSecurity Ltd.           http://www.objectsecurity.com