Re: [Qemu-devel] [edk2] license for binary drivers

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

Il 06/08/2014 12:34, Laszlo Ersek ha scritto:
> So no, you can't ship an OVMF binary (or source tarball) that contains
> the FAT driver, bundled as part of the GPLv2 (+compatible) QEMU
> distribution, either in source or in binary form.

What Laszlo said is mostly my understanding too (IANAL etc.).

Just one thing: the GPL does allow you to "merely aggregate" the OVMF
binaries with QEMU sources or QEMU binaries; and a lawyer could also
tell you the if QEMU were to ship OVMF binaries in its tarball, it would
be mere aggregation.  It would then be allowed by the GPL.

I wouldn't disagree; the OVMF binaries are just data as far as QEMU is
concerned.

However, the non-free nature of the OVMF binaries mean that QEMU will
never ever ship OVMF binaries until the license is fixed for the
offending FAT driver.  Not only because we don't want to get into legal
minefields, but also because QEMU is free software and wants to keep its
distributed releases entirely free.

Paolo