From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:42989) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cTREL-0006RG-N1 for Qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:43:10 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cTREH-0008Ku-0m for Qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:43:09 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:33616) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cTREG-0008JA-Rl for Qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:43:04 -0500 Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2017 10:42:59 +0000 From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" Message-ID: <20170117104258.GD2053@work-vm> References: <6205DF8A-7643-432F-88FF-12B1E9DEF5D8@livius.net> <277E72EB-288A-498F-9208-99EBF09218A6@livius.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] CMSIS SVD based peripheral definitions List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Peter Maydell Cc: Liviu Ionescu , QEMU Developer * Peter Maydell (peter.maydell@linaro.org) wrote: > On 9 January 2017 at 17:47, Liviu Ionescu wrote: > > I can't dispute this, but does't the GPLv2 requirements apply to > > the qemu executable only? my JSON files are not compiled into the > > binary, but are data files, read by the executable when required. > > and anyway, the original license covers the original XML files, > > mine are not only JSON, but are also slightly different. >=20 > I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but merely > my own opinion: > (1) if you're reading in the data files at runtime then there's > a spectrum between "just reading data provided by the user which > didn't ship with QEMU, and QEMU works OK without this particular > data" (clearly OK) and "reading data that shipped with QEMU > and where QEMU won't work at all without it" (the data files > are clearly part of the program as a whole and the GPL > applies to them even if they don't happen to be binaries); > where you stand legally probably depends on where on the > spectrum you are. >=20 > (2) your JSON files are a derived work from the original > XML, so the license of those XML files (whatever it is) still > applies to them. Making modifications or a mechanical > transformation of the original files is not sufficient to > allow you to discard the license... >=20 > With my project maintainer hat on, I prefer to avoid > grey areas, because it avoids potential trouble later on. Being able to read a machine description from a file at run time sounds reasonable, as do tools to manipulate those descriptions. I don't see why such a description file would be any different =66rom a firmware file or config file, especially if you were to think of QEMU in this case more like a simulation environment which I think is what Liviu is trying to use it as. I agree actually including/distributing those description files is a comple= tely different issue if they're derived from someone elses files; but that wouldn't stop you creating some simple examples (e.g. the existing related machine types) from scratch. Dave > thanks > -- PMM >=20 -- Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@redhat.com / Manchester, UK