[PATCH 08/27] ARM: mvebu: armada-370-xp: Relicense the device tree under GPLv2+/X11

Jason Cooper
2014-12-16T14:45:33Z

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 02:37:19PM +0100, Simon Guinot wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 08:03:31AM -0500, Jason Cooper wrote:
> > Simon,
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 12:22:21AM +0100, Simon Guinot wrote:
> > > On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 04:38:16PM +0100, Gregory CLEMENT wrote:
> > > > The current GPL only licensing on the device tree makes it very
> > > > impractical for other software components licensed under another
> > > > license.
> > > >
> > > > In order to make it easier for them to reuse our device trees,
> > > > relicense our device trees under a GPL/X11 dual-license.
> > > >
> > > > Cc: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
> > > > Cc: Arnaud Ebalard <arno@natisbad.org>
> > > > Cc: Ezequiel Garcia <ezequiel.garcia@free-electrons.com>
> > > > Cc: Greg Ungerer <gerg@uclinux.org>
> > > > Cc: Heikki Krogerus <heikki.krogerus@linux.intel.com>
> > > > Cc: Jason Cooper <jason@lakedaemon.net>
> > > > Cc: Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@arm.com>
> > > > Cc: Nobuhiro Iwamatsu <iwamatsu@nigauri.org>
> > > > Cc: Simon Baatz <gmbnomis@gmail.com>
> > > > Cc: Simon Guinot <simon.guinot@sequanux.org>
> > > > Cc: Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>
> > > > Cc: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Gregory CLEMENT <gregory.clement@free-electrons.com>
> > > > ---
> > > > arch/arm/boot/dts/armada-370-xp.dtsi | 40 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
> > > > 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > Hi Gregory,
> > >
> > > NAK for me.
> >
> > Well, I'm a bit surprised that this is the first one. :) Care to
> > explain why so that we can work towards an amenable compromise?
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> I am also a bit surprised to be the only one :)
>
> As I have no interest in a flame war either, I am not gonna elaborate
> on this. But in a few words, I don't think that allowing a permissive
> licence alternative is good for software sharing (which is important
> to me).

Ok, fair enough. I just needed to know if the NAK was against the
GPLv2+ part or the X11 part. Clearly, it's the X11 part.

So let's look at what we have (trying to stick to facts):

- alienating contributors in bad (yes, this is first)
- sometimes the community has to do something a minority disagrees with,
but it should be avoided, if at all possible.
- devicetree is so useful, other projects are adopting it
- if our binding docs are good, rewriting dts{i} isn't hard.
- rewriting dts{i} can lead to fragmentation
- maintaining two devicetree trees would be a pia (X11, GPLonly)
- reverting/rewriting GPLonly commits is possible, but see first bullet.
- Simon may not be the only contributor who disagrees with X11.
- of the known consumers of dts{i}, *BSD is the only one with licensing
issues.

So our goal is to avoid fragmentation by allowing *BSD to use our dts{i}
files as is. Our secondary goal is to avoid a maintenance headache.

Options:

- Ask Simon to find an OSI-compatible license to replace X11 that:
- *BSD can use
- meets the intent of himself and other like-minded authors
- Leave licensing as is, but make a statement that *using* the dts
doesn't create a derivative work under the GPL (similar to Linus'
statement re the Linux kernel, Wolfgang and U-Boot, etc).
- Screw it, plow forward, and revert/rewrite GPLonly commits
- Ignore the whole issue and hope it goes away.

Personally, I'm in favor of the second one, and think it has the highest
chance of success. After all, ARM-based *BSD is launched from a GPL
bootloader in most cases, right (U-Boot, barebox)? Thoughts?

thx,

Jason.