Re: [Qemu-devel] KVM call agenda for 2013-05-28

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 05/31/13 16:38, Anthony Liguori wrote:

> It's either Open Source or it's not.  It's currently not.

I disagree with this binary representation of Open Source or Not. If it
weren't (mostly) Open Source, how could we fork (most of) it as you're
suggesting (from the soapbox :))?

> I have a hard
> time sympathesizing with trying to work with a proprietary upstream.

My experience has been positive.

First of all, whether UEFI is a good thing or not is controversial. I
won't try to address that.

However UEFI is here to stay, machines are being shipped with it, Linux
and other OSen try to support it. Developing (or running) an OS in
combination with a specific firmware is sometimes easier / more economic
in a virtual environment, hence there should be support for qemu + UEFI.
It is this mindset that I operate in. (Oh, I also forgot to mention that
this task has been assigned to me by my superiors as well :))

Jordan, the OvmfPkg maintainer is responsive and progressive in the true
FLOSS manner (*), which was a nice surprise for a project whose coding
standards for example are made 100% after Windows source code, and whose
mailing list is mostly subscribed to by proprietary vendors. Really when
it comes to OvmfPkg patches the process follows the "normal" FLOSS
development model.

(*) Jordan, I hope this will prompt you to merge VirtioNetDxe v4 real
soon now :)

I personally think the 2-clause BSDL for 99% of the project was a very
sane and practical one from Intel et al.

FatPkg is a sad exception. One might even consider it a bad accident:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.bios.tianocore.devel/1861/focus=1878

I have no idea how that selection process went down, but I assume if
FLOSS people had been screaming very loud at that time and had offered a
*simple* (which ext2 is not, I gather), wide-spread and unencumbered
filesystem, things would be different today.

> In terms of creating a FAT module, the most likely source would seem to
> be the kernel code and since that's GPL, I don't think it's terribly
> avoidable to end up with a GPL'd uefi implementation.
> 
> If that's inevitable, then we're wasting effort by rewriting stuff under
> a BSD license.

Please ask your employer if they'd be willing to put their name on an
original, clean-room, GPL-licensed implementation of FAT32 for UEFI.


Thus far we've been talking copyright rather than patents, but there's
also this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_filesystem#Challenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_filesystem#Patent_infringement_lawsuits

It almost doesn't matter who prevails in such a lawsuit; the
*possibility* of such a lawsuit gives people cold feet. Blame the USPTO.

Laszlo