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From: Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>
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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:04:32 -0500
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] SoftFloat licensing in Linux kernel
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To: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>
Cc: qemu-devel <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>

Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> writes:

> On 29 April 2013 11:37, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:
>> On 11 April 2013 07:49, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> QEMU uses the John Hauser's SoftFloat library.  It seems the matter
>>> isn't settled yet in Linux but the FSF says the license is
>>> incompatible with GPLv2.
>>
>> So the resolution determined for the kernel is that they actually
>> took the softfloat code at a version before the indemnification
>> clause appeared in upstream-softfloat's license:
>> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2013-April/163904.html
>>
>> Given that that change only happened ~2010 it seems pretty
>> likely that QEMU's softfloat code also predates it; has
>> anybody done the necessary digging in our version control
>> history to confirm?
>
> ...rats, looks like (a) the license change was earlier, at
> the upstream version 2->2b boundary and (b) QEMU's softfloat
> is based on 2b, not 2 (as the kernel's is.)

The kernel code is quite different than the QEMU code too.  Looks like
it would be quite a lot of work to switch to the kernel implementation.

That said, I think it's our best long term option...

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>
> -- PMM