Re: KVM call agenda for 2013-05-28

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> writes:

> On Fri, 2013-05-31 at 10:43 -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> It's even more fundamental.  OVMF as a whole (at least in it's usable
>> form) is not Open Source. 
>
> The FAT module is required to make EDK2 usable, and yes, that's not Open
> Source. So in a sense you're right.
>
> But we're talking here about *replacing* the FAT module with something
> that *is* open source. And the FAT module isn't a fundamental part of
> EDK2; it's just an optional module that happens to be bundled with the
> repository.

So *if* we replace the FAT module *and* that replacement was GPL, would
there be any objects to having more GPL modules for things like virtio,
ACPI, etc?

And would that be doable in the context of OVMF or would another project
need to exist for this purpose?

> So I think you're massively overstating the issue. OVMF/EDK2 *is* Open
> Source, and replacing the FAT module really isn't that hard.
>
> We can only bury our heads in the sand and ship qemu with
> non-EFI-capable firmware for so long...

Which is why I think we need to solve the real problem here.

> I *know* there's more work to be done. We have SeaBIOS-as-CSM, Jordan
> has mostly sorted out the NV variable storage, and now the FAT issue is
> coming up to the top of the pile. But we aren't far from the point where
> we can realistically say that we want the Open Source OVMF to be the
> default firmware shipped with qemu.

Yes, that's why I'm raising this now.  We all knew that we'd have to
talk about this eventually.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>
> -- 
> dwmw2