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

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 05/31/13 17:43, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> writes:
> 
>> On Fri, 2013-05-31 at 08:04 -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>>>
>>> <soapbox>
>>>
>>> Fork OVMF, drop the fat module, and just add GPL code.  It's an easily
>>> solvable problem.
>>
>> Heh. Actually it doesn't need to be a fork. It's modular, and the FAT
>> driver is just a single module. Which is actually included in *binary*
>> form in the EDK2 repository, I believe, and its source code is
>> elsewhere.
>>
>> We could happily make a GPL¹ or LGPL implementation of a FAT module and
>> build our OVMF with that instead, and we wouldn't need to fork OVMF at
>> all.
> 
> So can't we have GPL virtio modules too?  I don't think there's any
> problem there except for the FAT module.

I share your assessment.

> I would propose more of a virtual fork.  It could consist of a git repo with
> the GPL modules + a submodule for edk2.  Ideally, there would be no need
> to actually fork edk2.

Indeed. edk2 is extremely modular. But in order to get a useful firmware
image ultimately, you need a FAT driver.

> My assumption is that edk2 won't take GPL code.

Correct, see eg. OvmfPkg/Contributions.txt.

Laszlo