Formal license ambiguity in arch/arm/boot/dts/sun?i-a*.dts

[maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com (Maxime Ripard)]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2014 at 11:40:02AM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 02, 2014 at 12:22:06PM +0200, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 03:20:23PM +0200, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> > > Hi Russell,
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 10:23:17PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 09:25:10PM +0200, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> > > > > On Sun, Aug 03, 2014 at 07:59:27PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > > > > I would actually prefer if we could migrate a lot of these files to BSD license,
> > > > > > provided the original authors agree. We want the dtb blobs to be embeddable into
> > > > > > boot loaders of any license.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Even though I'd be open to having my contributions to DTBs under the
> > > > > BSD, is this really a thing?
> > > > > 
> > > > > I mean, for all I know, an OS/Bootloader would just parse a documented
> > > > > binary file, and I don't see any derivative work there.
> > > > 
> > > > How does the OS/Bootloader end up with that binary file?
> > > > 
> > > > For the sake of argument, let's say that the BSDs want to move to DT on
> > > > ARM.  Great, they convert over to parsing our DT blobs.
> > > > 
> > > > However, they can't distribute the binary DT blobs to their users without
> > > > coming up against the problems of the GPL wrt binary distribution.
> > > > 
> > > > They could distribute the source files, but remember that many of those
> > > > are currently GPL licensed, so they'd probably end up having to package
> > > > them entirely separately, if they're willing to do that at all.
> > > > 
> > > > Or they could decide to ignore us altogether, and do their own DT stuff,
> > > > maybe partially implementing our properties, or maybe coming up with
> > > > different and/or incompatible properties - which would be bad because
> > > > we now end up with two ways to describe the same hardware in active use.
> > > > 
> > > > I suspect the final option is the one they'd choose, and it's in our
> > > > interest that _that_ doesn't happen.
> > > 
> > > Ah, yes, it's not really about a fear of a GPL-spread, but rather a
> > > concern about the source distribution. Makes sense.
> > > 
> > > How should we deal with such relicensing?
> > 
> > Ping?
> > 
> > Are we doing this on a per platform basis? Should we enforce this dual
> > licensing for the future DTS patches? If so, starting from when?
> 
> I have no answers to your questions - I put the question a number of
> times to Grant directly, and have been totally ignored.
> 
> So, I think we just do whatever we think is the correct approach.
> 
> Remember, when you change the licensing on something which has had
> multiple contributors, you need to seek the permission from everyone
> how contributed to it - so it will have to be done on a per platform
> and per-SoC basis.

Ack.

> I would also strongly suggest that future DTS files should be dual
> licensed from the start, and that we require contributions for the
> DTS files to be under both licenses.

So I guess like Chen-Yu suggested that we should change the license of
the DTSI first, and then the DTS. Otherwise, it wouldn't work very
well, I guess you can't really relicense a GPL-only file.

Thanks!
Maxime

-- 
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com
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