Re: [Qemu-devel] Add support for new image type

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 05/16/2012 12:48 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Il 16/05/2012 19:06, Kai Meyer ha scritto:
>> 1) It's been suggested to me that since we have the rights to distribute
>> our closed source shared library, there is a precedence for being able
>> to distributed a modified version of qemu that does run-time linking
>> against our shared library. The absence or presence of our shared
>> library simply enables or disables support for our file format. We are
>> happy to make available all changes to the qemu source code, but we are
>> not in a position to re-license our shared library's source code to a
>> compatible GPL license. This seems to be in contradiction to Paolo's
>> statement above, so while I can't resist asking if this is possible, I
>> don't have any realistic expectation that this is acceptable.
>
> That's really getting into grey areas.  IANAL, so I cannot answer this
> question.

It's not morally grey though.  The GPL is designed to attempt to prohibit this 
and as a copyright holder in QEMU, I choose[1] to use the GPL specifically to 
prevent this.

QEMU only exists because people have contributed back their improvements to the 
project.  Not contributing back means that you are only taking from the 
community withing returning anything back.  Only your lawyer can tell you 
whether this is legal or not, but it's certainly unkind.

[1] I == Anthony Liguori, not IBM.  I began my involvement in QEMU long before 
IBM paid me to be.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori