Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/3] Add BIOS splash image support

Jan Kiszka
2008-12-17T16:38:17Z

Paul Brook wrote:
>> BTW, why does qemu not carry all bochs bios source? For reference, but
>> also to fully comply with the LGPL (pointing to the original source is
>> not sufficient when delivering binaries - like e.g. bios.bin...).
>
> If this is really an issue, then I strongly suggest we fix it by moving the
> bios into its own project, and have everyone fetch it from there.

Qemu distributes binaries that have been generated from LGPLed sources
(this is at least the case for bochs, one would have to check the
situation for the other firmware images), so it has to provide the
corresponding source code according to the license terms. But if any
bochs copyright holder will ever sue a qemu maintainer on this is a
different question.

Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that anyone else who redistributes
qemu has to comply to this terms as well, thus currently has to patch
the "license bug" out of tree. At least from this perspective, it would
be nice to fix it - however this may happen in details (wasn't there
also some idea to switch to SeaBIOS due to build simplifications, or was
this only on the kvm list?).

Jan

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