Re: [Qemu-ppc] [Qemu-devel] [RFC 00/12] target-ppc: Decimal Floating Point

[Eric Blake]

On 04/14/2014 09:23 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 04/14/2014 09:18 AM, Tom Musta wrote:
>>
>> I am trying to make sense of the contents of the QEMU LICENSE file which 
>> states this:
>>
>>     "1) QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
>>     version 2."
>>
>> but then later states this:
>>
>>     "As of July 2013, contributions under version 2 of the GNU General Public
>>     License (and no later version) are only accepted for the following files
>>     or directories: bsd-user/, linux-user/, hw/misc/vfio.c, hw/xen/xen_pt*."
>>
>> I am working on getting libdecnumber source with GPLv2 licensing, but the 
>> previous
>> paragraph suggests that it will not be accepted either.
> 
> Most likely, your changes to libdecnumber will give it GPLv2+ licensing,
> since the library is already available under GPLv3+ and you would just
> be widening that to also include GPLv2 (in other words, your change
> would implicitly be GPLv2+ because it already has the "or later" built
> in by the fact that the library is already available under a later
> license). But if you were to succeed at releasing libdecnumber as
> GPLv2-only instead of GPLv2+ (I don't recommend attempting that, but for
> the sake of argument), then you would modify that part of the LICENSE
> file statement to add libdecnumber to the set of files which come from
> GPLv2-only sources.

[I hit send too soon...]

The point of the two statements is that qemu as a whole is FORCED to be
GPLv2-only, because of its use of GPLv2-only sources; but that we are
TRYING to be nice to other users by minimizing the use of GPLv2-only,
and instead demand that MOST new submissions are compatible with GPLv2+
(that also includes submissions that are more permissive, such as BSD
licensed submissions).  The key point is that we want a GPLv3+ project
to have the option of copying a maximal set of files from qemu without
violating licenses - this is possible for GPLv2+ files but not for
GPLv2-only files.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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