[U-Boot] U-book and GPLv3?

Remy Bohmer
2009-07-07T20:07:27Z

Hello Wolfgang,

2009/7/6 Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>:
> 1) If we take into consideration that you are not subscribed ?to ?the
> ? list, only 20 out of 1712 subscribers (less than 1.2%) bothered to
> ? comment at all.

FWIW, I did not comment on this so far, because from what I felt what
I had to say was already said. This might be true for others as well.

> 2) Some of these 20 posters did not take a firm ?stand ?whether ?they
> ? are ?pro ?or con moving to GPLv3; an unweighted count gives 6 more
> ? or less clear votes pro GPLv3 versus 10 votes against such a move.
>
> 3) It seems reasonable to me to ?add ?some ?weight ?to ?these ?votes,
> ? taking ? into ? consideration ? how ? much ?the ?posters ?actually
> ? contributed to the U-Boot project.

As far as I understand it, a move to gpl3 will need the approval of
_all_ copyright holders to make such a switch. (not all names are
listed in the headers)
While U-boot contains a lot of imported code from other projects (like
Linux and others) it will need the approval from the original authors
of that code (not in the first place the person who integrated that
code in U-boot). This sounds like an impossible task to me.
Alternative is to remove all gpl2-only derived code.
Only by looking at the USB code it appears to me, it will be needed to
remove the entire USB stack (which has a very close resemblance with
old Linux USB code), or rewrite it from scratch. Similar things will
probably be true for other code as well.

This move to gpl3 will throw up a huge barrier for importing future
Linux code in U-boot, because Linux is still gpl2-only, and as such
Linux code can no longer be used in U-boot...

So, the goal is to prevent misuse by some hardware vendors of U-boot
code. To accomplish this a huge barrier will be thrown up for all
developers what eventually will slow down future developments, and
that again will increase the chance that forks will arise... (And I
believe there is at least 1 fork already...)

I might be missing something huge here, but It seems to me gpl3 is the
wrong hammer to reach the goal.
(So, if you like clear pro/con, count me in the clear 'con' group)

Kind Regards,

Remy