From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43853) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XF1Vq-0006Ih-K5 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:44:27 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XF1Vh-0008HX-J0 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:44:18 -0400 Received: from mail-wg0-x22c.google.com ([2a00:1450:400c:c00::22c]:34253) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XF1Vh-0008H3-CP for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:44:09 -0400 Received: by mail-wg0-f44.google.com with SMTP id m15so2606001wgh.27 for ; Wed, 06 Aug 2014 06:44:08 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Paolo Bonzini Message-ID: <53E23125.5000009@redhat.com> Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:44:05 +0200 From: Paolo Bonzini MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20140806074054.GF2170@masterlulz.local> <53E2049E.4010106@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <53E2049E.4010106@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [edk2] license for binary drivers List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: edk2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Reza Jelveh Cc: qemu devel list Il 06/08/2014 12:34, Laszlo Ersek ha scritto: > So no, you can't ship an OVMF binary (or source tarball) that contains > the FAT driver, bundled as part of the GPLv2 (+compatible) QEMU > distribution, either in source or in binary form. What Laszlo said is mostly my understanding too (IANAL etc.). Just one thing: the GPL does allow you to "merely aggregate" the OVMF binaries with QEMU sources or QEMU binaries; and a lawyer could also tell you the if QEMU were to ship OVMF binaries in its tarball, it would be mere aggregation. It would then be allowed by the GPL. I wouldn't disagree; the OVMF binaries are just data as far as QEMU is concerned. However, the non-free nature of the OVMF binaries mean that QEMU will never ever ship OVMF binaries until the license is fixed for the offending FAT driver. Not only because we don't want to get into legal minefields, but also because QEMU is free software and wants to keep its distributed releases entirely free. Paolo