Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Sponsorship for QEMU Developers...

[Leonardo E. Reiter]

Robert,

http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/license.html

Specifically:

The following points clarify the QEMU licenses:

    * The QEMU virtual CPU core library (libqemu.a) and the QEMU PC 
system emulator are released under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Linux user mode QEMU emulator is the only GPL'd bit.  We do not 
enable that.

Let me state my intentions again: we want to do everything we can to 
sponsor QEMU to make it better and keep it free.  We are not interested 
in stealing its code and selling it.  The closed-source value added 
functionality that we sell is entirely home-grown, and we have taken all 
the precautions necessary to avoid contamination.  We would also like to 
contribute significantly ourselves in the form of code.  For example, a 
patch that converts the QEMU library and PC emulator into a shared 
library could be useful for many other projects, not just Win4Lin. 
While we don't expect Fabrice to admit it officially, we will certainly 
offer it to the community.  Like that piece, there will be others as well.

- Leo Reiter

Robert Wittams wrote:
> Leonardo E. Reiter wrote:
> Erm... does this sound exactly like linking to anyone else? You can't 
> honestly think that manually passing pointers around is going to be an 
> end run around the GPL?
>
> Leo, where did you get the idea that not using header files means that 
> the combined system is not a derivative work? If the combined system is 
> distributed with the GPLed work included, and relies on it to function, 
> I see no way it can escape being considered a derived work and therefore 
> GPL covered or undistributable.


--
Leonardo E. Reiter
Vice President of Engineering

Win4Lin, Inc.
Virtual Computing from Desktop to Data Center
Main: +1 512 339 7979
Fax: +1 512 532 6501
http://www.win4lin.com