BTRFS and grub-extras legal position

BTRFS and grub-extras legal position

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

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Hello, all. It seems that recently there are different rumors and
misunderstandings about btrfs support. This mail is to make the things
clear.
1) Technical work is done. I haven't reviewed any patches to avoid being
tainted.
2) Every patch submitted till now uses Oracle's copyrighted work
released only under GPLv2 which is incompatible with GRUB
3) license incompatible works aren't ok for either grub or grub-extras. Why?
There are 3 kind of works:
a) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed. Protected.
   A code for which copyright assignment was signed and which if
improperly used can be protected by FSF.
b) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed.
   A code for which copyright disclaimers were signed which makes for
copyright holder impossible to sue users.
c) Freely redistribuable.
   No disclaimers were signed but the will of author to release to
public usage was sufficiently clear.
d) Not redistribuable
   Distribution of such code will be a plain copyright infrigement

For GNU GRUB code under a and b is ok. Occasionaly code of type c is
permitted on case-by-case basis (e.g. lzma).
grub-extras has a less strict copyright policy. For grub-extras code
under a, b and c is ok. In practice it holds only code under c since
code under a and b is in GRUB proper.
Code under d isn't ok for either project. Neither GNU GRUB nor
grub-extras is a place for "warez".

-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko



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Re: BTRFS and grub-extras legal position

[Chris Mason]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 06:27:33PM +0200, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> Hello, all. It seems that recently there are different rumors and
> misunderstandings about btrfs support. This mail is to make the things
> clear.
> 1) Technical work is done. I haven't reviewed any patches to avoid being
> tainted.
> 2) Every patch submitted till now uses Oracle's copyrighted work
> released only under GPLv2 which is incompatible with GRUB
> 3) license incompatible works aren't ok for either grub or grub-extras. Why?
> There are 3 kind of works:
> a) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed. Protected.
>    A code for which copyright assignment was signed and which if
> improperly used can be protected by FSF.
> b) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed.
>    A code for which copyright disclaimers were signed which makes for
> copyright holder impossible to sue users.
> c) Freely redistribuable.
>    No disclaimers were signed but the will of author to release to
> public usage was sufficiently clear.
> d) Not redistribuable
>    Distribution of such code will be a plain copyright infrigement
> 
> For GNU GRUB code under a and b is ok. Occasionaly code of type c is
> permitted on case-by-case basis (e.g. lzma).
> grub-extras has a less strict copyright policy. For grub-extras code
> under a, b and c is ok. In practice it holds only code under c since
> code under a and b is in GRUB proper.
> Code under d isn't ok for either project. Neither GNU GRUB nor
> grub-extras is a place for "warez".

The btrfs grub2 patches were submitted with annotations for where the
code came from.  I need to verify each of the annotations fits oracle
copyrighted code, and where required get permission to license under
gplv2 or later.

I really want to do this and appreciate the time grub2 developers have
spent on btrfs.  I'll get it done.

-chris