Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Redesign of kernel graphics interface

[Nicolas Souchu <nsouch@free.fr>]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 02:42:14PM -0700, Jon Smirl wrote:
> --- Nicolas Souchu <nsouch@free.fr> wrote:
> > > A major topic that I missed in the original list was how to handle BSD. DRM
> > > is under the BSD license and FB is GPL. If these two code bases are merged,
> > > what are we going to do about BSD? I don't know the appropriate BSD lists 
> > > to post this to so please forward as necessary.
> > 
> > What is exactly your question concerning licenses?
> 
> FB is GPL licensed. DRM is BSD licensed. If FB and DRM are merged the end result
> will be GPL licensed code because of the way the licenses work. To change that
> you would have to get permission from every FB contributor to relicense their
> contribution from GPL to BSD. I suspect that it is pratically impossible to
> track all of the FB contributors down and what do you do if some won't
> cooperate? If the FB/DRM combo is GPL it can't be merged back into the BSD
> kernels. What we could do is build a merged driver and continue to have some of
> the source files licensed BSD and some GPL.

But who cares? Do you really intend to keep a common BSD and Linux API/code base?
Offering both solutions under BSD and GPL would be good for suggesting correct
license usage in the embedded world. GPL is too often bypassed.

> The big reason for merging is memory management. If FB supports multiple heads
> it is forced into doing memory management. DRI has memory management needs that
> go far beyond what FB needs so a merged system has to use DRM memory management.
> Ian has made proposals on how to do this and he is working on improving them. 

What is best? Bring modesetting to DRM or memory management to FB?

> BenH and others have made proposals for pushing the mode setting code into a
> user space library in order to reduce kernel footprint and ease debugging. Most
> of the code needed for this library already exists in the current Linux FB
> drivers. I'm not sure if this could be relicensed BSD when it is moved to user
> space.

One advantage of true graphic drivers (opposed to VESA or more generally bios modes)
is that they can boot some archs in graphic mode (no text mode) without bios.
Exactly what linuxfb was originaly designed to. How do you perform this from userspace?

-- 
Nicholas Souchu - nsouch@free.fr - nsouch@FreeBSD.org
http://www.freebsd.org/~nsouch/kgi4BSD


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