[U-Boot] [PATCH 2/4] Add safe vsnprintf and snprintf library functions

Sonny Rao
2011-09-28T23:26:18Z

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Graeme Russ <graeme.russ@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
> On 24/09/11 03:38, Simon Glass wrote:
>> From: Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@chromium.org>
>>
>> From: Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@chromium.org>
>>
>> These functions are useful in U-Boot because they allow a graceful failure
>> rather than an unpredictable stack overflow when printf() buffers are
>> exceeded.
>>
>> Mostly copied from the Linux kernel. I copied vscnprintf and
>> scnprintf so we can change printf and vprintf to use the safe
>> implementation but still return the correct values.
>
> Have you checked for license compatibility? U-Boot is GPLv2+ and (most) of
> Linux is GPLv2 - You may not be legally permitted to do this

According to the FSF site, GPLv2 is compatible with GPLv3, see:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

So it's fine to distribute them together.

In reality though, this code in U-boot was already copied from the
same file in an older version of the kernel. The license (GPLv2 only)
hasn't changed on that file, so U-boot is already distributing what is
GPLv2 only code alongside GPLv2+ code -- which as I mentioned above is
fine.

The code here is derived from a later version of that same file, so I
don't believe integrating this patch into U-boot actually changes
anything with respect to licensing of this code.

Sonny