Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v1 02/20] acpi/hvmloader: Move acpi_info initialization out of ACPI code

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 07, 2016 at 01:45:05PM -0400, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
> On 07/07/2016 01:15 PM, Wei Liu wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 07, 2016 at 01:09:28PM -0400, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
> >> On 07/07/2016 12:58 PM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> >>> There are two serious problems with this.
> >>>
> >>> 1. You have dropped the copyright attribution to Intel and Xensource.
> >>>
> >>> 2. You have changed the licence to BSD-style, even though the original
> >>>    was GPLv2-only.
> >>
> >> I meant this to be a GPLv2 license. And I made the same mistake in a
> >> couple of other files.
> >>
> > The other question is, will this GPLv2 file be linked against other
> > toolstack components (libxl is LGPL)? If so, how should we deal with
> > different licences?
> 
> Two new libxl files will be LGPL and but libacpi files will be GPLv2
> (because most of the files there are already GPLv2, I just added a
> couple of new ones).
> 
> Which would mean that a non-GPL users cannot link against libxl anymore,
> right?

Having different licenses will invite the lawyers in the conversation
which can drag things out.

A quick read says one can add an exception to GPLv2 license to allow it
to be linked (see 
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs)
but that would require Copyright OK from the original holders.

It would be far easier to ask the copyright holders:

Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>
 Anthony PERARD <anthony.perard@xxxxxxxxxx>
 David Vrabel <david.vrabel@xxxxxxxxxx>
 Dexuan Cui <dexuan.cui@xxxxxxxxx>
 Eddie Dong <eddie.dong@xxxxxxxxx>
 Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>
 John Levon <john.levon@xxxxxxx>
 Keir Fraser <keir@xxxxxxx>
 Keir Fraser <keir@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
 Liu, Jinsong <jinsong.liu@xxxxxxxxx>
 Paul Durrant <paul.durrant@xxxxxxxxxx>
 Qing He <qing.he@xxxxxxxxx>
 Stefan Berger <stefanb@xxxxxxxxxx>
 Tim Deegan <Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxx>
 Tobias Geiger <tobias.geiger@xxxxxxxxx>
 Xiaowei Yang <xiaowei.yang@xxxxxxxxx>

If they would be OK making the code (this is from
tools/firmware/hvmloader/acpi/acpi2_0.h) lGPL.

Or is there some other technical way around this?

I can't recall whether the 'dlopen' (so runtime loading
vs linking) of an GPL library is from Lesser GPL is OK.
(so proprietary code linking with libxl, and libxl dlopen'ing
the libacpi code').

Sounds like we may need to consult the lawyers after all.

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