On 29.01.2018 23:12, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: > Hi Nico, > > On 27.01.2018 15:49, Nico Huber wrote: >> Hi Stefan, >> >> On 26.01.2018 23:43, Stefan Tauner wrote: >>> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:51:46 +0100 >>> Nico Huber <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi folks, >>>> >>>> I've just noticed that most of flashrom is licensed under GPLv2 + any >>>> later version, while about a third of the code base is GPLv2 only. >>>> I wonder if that is intentional, or if any of the license headers was >>>> just copy pasted and spread too much? >>> Hi, >>> >>> using GPLv2 code in a GPLv2+ project is perfectly fine: >>> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#compat-matrix-footnote-2 >> of course. But given that people ask from time to time about libflashrom >> GPLv2 might not be the only license involved. >> >>> Not sure about the "spread factor" but there are certainly *some* parts >>> that are GPLv2 so there is not much incentive to look further IMHO... >> Not to completely unify the licensing, no. But flashrom is rather >> flexible concerning what is build into the binary. So we could still >> strive to make it GPLv2+ in its core or something. >> >> Also, I am wondering if I should encourage contributors that add new >> files to make it GPLv2+ or not. > > > The decision to have parts of flashrom licensed unter GPLv2-only was a > response to some external people wanting to add GPLv3+ code to the code > base (or create a GPLv3/GPLv3+ fork for purely political reasons) many > years ago. That would have made flashrom unusable for GPLv2-only > projects, which would have been a bad thing for coreboot. > Back then, I had asked RMS for advice on how to prevent a hostile GPLv3+ > takeover of a GPLv2+ codebase, and he told me that this was impossible > for GPLv2+ code. Due to that, we kept parts of flashrom licensed under > GPLv2-only. Back then, there was no GPLv3+ licensed project which would > have qualified as potential user of flashrom code, so there weren't any > downsides to that licensing decision.
Thanks for the elaboration. It's good to know that it was intentional. > The wave of "let's GPLv3 all the things" seems to mostly have subsided now. > > The decision of the preferred license for new files is hard. I think > both GPLv2 and GPLv2+ are reasonable at first glance, but I feel > uncomforable deciding this without reassessing the situation in detail. Well, when I discovered the current situation, my first thought was, omg what license is fwupd under. Because Richard Hughes intends to use lib- flashrom there. Fortunately, it's (L)GPLv2+. Second thought, what we do at secunet with coreboot updates in the payload would be impossible with GRUB and flashrom. > > As Stefan said, with some parts of flashrom being GPLv2-only there is > not much incentive to look further... I don't see it that final. Code can be relicensed, or rewritten if we'd decide that some parts or all flashrom should have a different license. It depends much on how seriously we take libflashrom, IMHO. GPLv2+ might make a lot more use cases possible. Nico _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list [email protected] https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom
