[Qemu-devel] a question about licensing

[Qemu-devel] a question about licensing

[Alex Rozenman]

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Hello,

I would like to get a clarification about possibility to incorporate our
proprietary code with QEMU in the following ways:

Way 1.
=====
Let's assume that I changed QEMU allowing a possibly to build it as
static/dynamic library (I needed to add a configuration option replacing
main by qemu_main and changing the main build target). Our customer wants to
build an executable from following components:
1. Modified QEMU library.
2. Our proprietary library (e.g. mylib.a, mylib.h)
3. An open source "glue" file(s) containing calls to QEMU library as well as
to mylib.a
I understand that the executable will become GPL and the customer is
intended to use it only internally. Is it possible to keep my mylib.a
proprietary and closed source ? Is it legal from QEMU point of view ?

Way 2.
=====
We will implement a kind of '-M" like option that will load a shareable
library of a board (for example -M dynamic:my_board.so), find and call a
function in order to initialize the board and then run normal QEMU main
loop. The board code will define its own peripherals and connect them to the
CPU. It is obvious, that our proprietary code shall not use any GPL
peripherals and only call to GLPL functions like "map_physical_memory" and
"write_physical_memory" etc.

-- 
Best regards,
Alex Rozenman (rozenman@gmail.com).

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Re: [Qemu-devel] a question about licensing

[Anthony Liguori]

Alex Rozenman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to get a clarification about possibility to incorporate 
> our proprietary code with QEMU in the following ways:

Licensing questions should be directed to lawyers.

I believe both scenarios go against the spirit of how QEMU is licensed 
though.  There is no intention of allowing QEMU as a whole to be used in 
a closed product or for it to be able to load closed plugins.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Way 1.
> =====
> Let's assume that I changed QEMU allowing a possibly to build it as 
> static/dynamic library (I needed to add a configuration option 
> replacing main by qemu_main and changing the main build target). Our 
> customer wants to build an executable from following components:
> 1. Modified QEMU library.
> 2. Our proprietary library (e.g. mylib.a, mylib.h)
> 3. An open source "glue" file(s) containing calls to QEMU library as 
> well as to mylib.a
> I understand that the executable will become GPL and the customer is 
> intended to use it only internally. Is it possible to keep my mylib.a 
> proprietary and closed source ? Is it legal from QEMU point of view ?
>
> Way 2.
> =====
> We will implement a kind of '-M" like option that will load a 
> shareable library of a board (for example -M dynamic:my_board.so), 
> find and call a function in order to initialize the board and then run 
> normal QEMU main loop. The board code will define its own peripherals 
> and connect them to the CPU. It is obvious, that our proprietary code 
> shall not use any GPL peripherals and only call to GLPL functions like 
> "map_physical_memory" and "write_physical_memory" etc.
>
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Alex Rozenman (rozenman@gmail.com <mailto:rozenman@gmail.com>).
>