[U-Boot-Users] Proposal for patch to configure networkparameters

[Ulf Samuelsson <ulf@atmel.com>]

>> Why do you need to separate something which NEVER is going to be written
>> again?
>
> I don't.
>
>> There is a cost involved with doing multiple programming steps and those
>> should be minimized.
>
> I never said anything about multiple programming steps.  Please  feel
> free  to  attach your hardware information block (or whatever you are
> going to call it) at the end of the U-Boot image (using "cat" or "dd"
> or similar) or insert it into some known to be unused area or ...
>

What is automatically generated is is 100% *outside* the patch
and we should stop that part of the discussion.

>> And still: The proposed patch will not do anything with network 
>> parameters
>> It will allow people to generate whatever config variables outside 
>> U-boot.
>
> Right. And this is something I consider a bad thing.  The  configura-
> tion  of U-Boot shall be done in U-Boot, and visible to everybody who
> sees the U-Boot source code.
>

Forcing people to do thing *your* way is against the GPL spirit.

Lets face it, everyone knows that the current way of configuring u-boot is 
horrible.
I am not at all interested  having novice users start doing this and then
calling me in frustration.

> Last but not least, this is also a GPL issue.
>
>> How they use this, you will not be aware of so I really do not understand
>> why you are against the patch.
>
> Just because of this: because I am not aware what people insert  into
> GPLed code.
>

GPL does not mean that *you* need to be aware and approve each and every 
change.
It means that if someone is interested in finding out how things
are done, they should have access to source.

>> The patch has really nothing to do with networking,
>
> But that was your introduction for it, wasn't it?

Yes, but there are a number of different uses for the patch.

>
>> Are you against giving developers freedom?
>
> Are you against making your changes available under GPL?

No, I am generating the added stuff from "buildroot" (buildroot.uclibc.org)
"buildroot" *is* GPL.

The whole purpose of my work is that I want to ship GPL source

I do not build any equipment. I do not ship any hardware.

I just try to make the embedded Linux design flow more accessible
to anyone that is interested. U-Boot is only a small part of that.

You can check out what I am doing on www.at91.com : project = AT91 buildroot

There I am collecting all the different things neeeded to get a board 
running for the novice.

Basically you should download this to a directory and then type

make B=at91rm9200df board
make

and then have everything ready a couple of hours later in
the "binaries/at91rm9200df" in buildroot.

By everything I mean:

Initial bootstrap (dataflashboot,flashboot,nandflashboot)
U-boot
script for u-boot autoscr
linux kernel
jffs2 file system
ext2 file system

The U-boot shall not have to be configured by the user using *manual* u-boot 
commands.

Instead the user will configure everything in buildroot using the "make 
menuconfig" interface
and the script should download and configure the board, flashing the kernel 
and ramdisk
and set the bootcmd.

It should allow for regenerating the script with a unique ethaddr.

Really nothing sinister about this.

############################################
Your argument that you want stuff to be GPL and this will help you is not 
valid.

I hope You agree that you cannot control what people put in their 
include/configs/<board>.h files.
Thus you have no more protection against people not releasing their code 
with
the patch as you have without the patch.

The effect of not approving the patch, is that you make life more difficult
for people which are in 100% compliant with GPL rules in order
to avoid making it easier for people that want to be non-compliant.


Since I am copying the u-boot config file from the buildroot source anyway I 
can always
append the stuff on the fly.

This is not a good approach since it become more difficult to do a good 
"make distclean".
A clean "make distclean" would in this case consist of:

    echo    "#"    > include/custom.h

Without the patch I will be forced to add some kind of header to my 
additions
and let make distclean scan all the <board>.h files for this header and 
remove
everything after that header.
Not a nice approach...


>
> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>


Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson                ulf at atmel.com
Atmel Nordic AB
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