Re: KVM call agenda for 2013-05-28

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> writes:

> Il 31/05/2013 19:06, Anthony Liguori ha scritto:
>> 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?
>
> I don't think it would be doable in TianoCore.  I think it would end up
> either in distros, or in QEMU.

As I think more about it, I think forking edk2 is inevitable.  We need a
clean repo that doesn't include the proprietary binaries.  I doubt
upstream edk2 is willing to remove the binaries.

But this can be quite simple using a combination of git-svn and a
rewriting script.  We did exactly this to pull out the VGABios from
Bochs and remove the binaries associated with it.  It's 100% automated
and can be kept in sync via a script on qemu.org.

> A separate question is whether OVMF makes more sense as part of
> TianoCore or rather as part of QEMU.

I'm not sure if qemu.git is the right location, but we can certainly
host an ovmf.git on qemu.git that embeds the scrubbed version of
edk2.git.

Of course, this would enable us to add GPL code (including a FAT module)
to ovmf.git without any impact on upstream edk2.

> With 75% of the free hypervisors
> now reunited under the same source repository, the balance is
> tilting...

<insert evil laugh> :-)

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>
> Paolo