Re: KVM call agenda for 2013-05-28

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 05/31/13 16:08, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-05-31 at 08:04 -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>
>> <soapbox>
>>
>> Fork OVMF, drop the fat module, and just add GPL code.  It's an easily
>> solvable problem.
> 
> Heh. Actually it doesn't need to be a fork. It's modular, and the FAT
> driver is just a single module. Which is actually included in *binary*
> form in the EDK2 repository, I believe, and its source code is
> elsewhere.

Correct.

> We could happily make a GPL¹ or LGPL implementation of a FAT module and
> build our OVMF with that instead, and we wouldn't need to fork OVMF at
> all.

Yes, that's one plan, *if* someone can sort out, or is willing to
shoulder, the perhaps illogical but still worrisome surroundings of
FatPkg / FatBinPkg.

(I don't intend to spread FUD!)

For example, if your employer authorizes you to implement GplFatPkg from
scratch, and distribute it as an external module, I -- as someone
without any education in law though -- will give you a standing ovation
and buy you a case of beer at KVM Forum 2013. Deal? :)

(You proved to have great leverage by getting the efi compat table
extended, so... :))

> ¹ If it's GPL, of course, then we mustn't include any *other* binary
> blobs in our OVMF build. But the whole point in this conversation is
> that we don't *want* to do that. So that's fine.

Right. Eg. Shell1 is embedded as a pre-built binary, but that's just
"convenience", you can build the in-tree Shell2 from source afresh and
embed that instead (and ship its source too).

Laszlo