From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Marek Vasut Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:16:51 +0100 Subject: [U-Boot] [PATCH] drivers/ddr/fsl: Dual-license DDR driver In-Reply-To: References: <1518032842-29379-1-git-send-email-york.sun@nxp.com> <330d41e5-bd7c-3005-0783-a028ae2377b4@gmail.com> <20180213124845.73B47240055@gemini.denx.de> Message-ID: List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de On 02/13/2018 07:32 PM, York Sun wrote: > On 02/13/2018 09:38 AM, Marek Vasut wrote: >> On 02/13/2018 05:30 PM, York Sun wrote: >>> On 02/13/2018 04:49 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote: >>>> Dear York, >>>> >>>> In message you wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Nobody said anything. Some addresses bounced. And most changes made out >>>>> people outside Freescale/NXP are minor changes, except twice the files >>>>> were moved during U-Boot structure change. What options do I have? >>>> >>>> Ask all people who contributed to that code for their explicit >>>> permission. Legally it is a huge difference between actively >>>> confirming approval and not reacting at all. >>>> >>> >>> >>> All, >>> >>> If you haven't responded, please give your explicit approval to change >>> Freescale DDR driver to dual-license so it can be re-used by other >>> project(s) with BSD license. Here is the list I compiled from the git >>> history. All commits made by Freescale/NXP employees are removed from >>> this list. >> >> [...] >> >>> cd84b1f - Marek Vasut, marek.vasut at gmail.com, 6 years ago : GCC4.6: >>> Squash warnings in ddr[123]_dimm_params.c >> >> I do NOT approve. >> >> My previous experience with dual-licensed code was with wpa-supplicant. >> A certain company manufacturing handhelds took it, modified it and was >> selling the binary. While we were porting Linux onto the device, we >> asked for the modifications to get the WiFi operational in the Linux port. >> >> What we got from this company was "it's BSD licensed, go away". Were the >> code GPL, they would be legally obliged to provide the changes, but it >> was BSD, so the company in question could make profit and the community >> lost. >> >> This was a prime example of how BSD license is harmful to software >> freedom and how the community lost because of the BSD license. I do not >> want to see this happening ever again and I like GPL for that very much. >> > > Marek, > > Please allow me to try to convince you. > Git log shows you have one commit cd84b1f which fixed the compiling > warning for GCC 4.6 on three debug messages. I appreciate your fix. > > This driver is for Freescale/NXP DDR controllers, specifically designed > on Freescale/NXP SoCs. We spent tremendous effort to make it robust. > This driver is useful to initialize DDR for the platforms. While we are > moving the platform initialization to ATF (Arm Trusted Firmware), or > other pre-bootloader code (such as NXP's implementation of ATF), this > driver can be reused to provide the same level of hardware support. As > you may know, ATF uses BSD-3 license (some files have GPL/BSD dual > licnese). Your approval will make our life easier without having to > rewrite the entire driver from scratch. So what is in it for me ? If the code remains GPL, I can ask NXP for changes to the driver if I have the binary which contains this code. If the code gets re-licensed to dual GPL/BSD, I assume in certain cases, NXP will choose BSD and will not be obliged to provide the changes. I don't see any benefit for me, any way I look at it, I'm either even or loose . Why can't you use the code under the current (GPL) license anyway ? -- Best regards, Marek Vasut