Re: [RFC 00/10] R300 QEMU device V2

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 04:00:01PM +0100, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> Hi Daniel, Aaron.
> 
> On 11/26/19 3:19 PM, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 06:14:27PM +0530, address@hidden wrote:
> > > From: Aaron Dominick <address@hidden>
> > > 
> > > I have removed the botched patches and have got the code working upto the 
> > > GART initialization.
> > > I am not sure how to implement the GART. I am guessing it should be an 
> > > IOMMU device but I think that is a bit much for an emulated card.
> > > The earlier problem of display probing seems to be resolved by using an 
> > > R300 bios I got from TechPowerUP's GPU database:
> > > 
> > >   https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/14509/14509
> > > I am NOT sure if we can distribute it in the QEMU source tree. If it
> > > does cause problems I can send a patch to remove it.
> > 
> > That site seems to be a repository of BIOS uploaded by arbitrary users,
> > with no information on what license terms might apply to the uploads.
> > 
> > We have to therefore assume the worst and treat the BIOS images on that
> > site as proprietary and not re-distributable, despite the fact that the
> > site itself is acting as a 3rd party distributor.
> 
> We can not redistribute this BIOS.
> 
> > IOW, we can't have this in QEMU git I'm afraid, unless someone can find
> > a trustworthy vendor source for the original image with accompanying
> > license information.
> 
> Daniel, I think there is no problem if Aaron contributes a model of the R300
> device to QEMU, right? This doesn't involve redistributing any BIOS.

Having just the device impl doesn't cause any legal problems.

It does become a slight usability issue, as any users need to go and find
the suitable BIOS in order to use the device. No downstream OS vendors are
going to be able to distribute this BIOS either

I don't know if we have hit this problem before & if we have any
general policies about it ?


Regards,
Daniel
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