Re: [Qemu-devel] licensing of IBM contributions to QEMU (was Re: [PULL v4 08/11] rdma: core logic)

["Michael R. Hines" <mrhines@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On 04/18/2013 10:53 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>>>>>> I'm guessing you need approval from Jiuxing Liu for this,
>>>>>> pls make him ack license change.
>>>>> He approves. He doesn't work for IBM anymore.
>>>> Does he approve version 2 or version 2 or later?
>>>>
>>> It doesn't matter - his contributions were made at IBM and he
>>> doesn't work for IBM anymore.
>> It's considered polite not to ignore author's wishes wrt licensing.
>> It's best to contact and get the ack if possible.  If not, please tell
>> the list and we'll consider the options.
> There are three cases:
>
> - relicensing to something less restrictive, employer agrees on more
> liberal license, employee doesn't.  The employer's choice wins.  There
> are certainly RH employees that would prefer v2 and no later version,
> but we are still releasing all RH changes as GPLv2+.
>
> - relicensing to something less restrictive, no employer (or employer
> lets the employee choose the license).  Here you *must* contact the
> employee.
>
> - relicensing to something compatible but more restrictive (e.g.
> BSD -> GPL).  No legal obligation to contact the author (his contributions
> would still be available on the older license, all you get by contacting
> the author is that you can remove the BSD terms from the file), but it
> is indeed more polite to do so.
>
>
> I'm pretty sure that IBM cares about licensing, but I don't know what
> their global policy is.  Surely they didn't do a full grant of their
> contributions to GPLv2+ (which RH and a bunch of other people did),
> but if _new_ IBM contributions are to be GPLv2+, there is no need to
> contact Jiuxing Liu.  Anthony?
>
> Paolo
>

Let me sync up with Anthony and we'll get back to everybody.

- Michael