On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 19:20 +0200, Dominic wrote: > Hello Zach, > > > > thank you for this posting. I was just formulating a reply to some of > your last emails, but it's probably better if what I had to say > remains in the privacy of my harddrive.
Since you have said that, I am intensely curious. Too many of mine die a similar death, and it could be something to share a laugh over... in a year or two. ;) > On Wednesday 24 June 2009 18:30:09 Zach Welch wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Here is the full list of GPL-compliant solutions for libftd2xx GPL > > compliance, after further review, consideration, and enumeration: > > > > 1) Documentation: build it yourself! > > 2) Build-Kit: automate the build on users' machines > > > > I fear those aren't options for the average Windows user of the > OpenOCD. Michael's packages were extremely popular because they were > very easy to use. I am not convinced; I really feel that a build-kit is doable. I feel confident, but it is by far not an realistic case for any serious deployments. The downloads would be unreasonably large... and all that wasted CPU time. And this, coming from a Gentoo user. ;) > > 3) XXX: to be revealed, if legal > > > > Is this some particular solution or a placeholder for things we > haven't yet thought of? Very specific. I just thought of it as a result of these threads, but I do not want to get the community's hopes up in the event that it turns out to be false hope. However, I will warn that it is build-kit related and remains difficult to scale reasonably well; again, far from ideal. > > 4) libftdi-ftd2xx: ABI compatible with libftdi, wraps ftd2xx > > > > How would ftd2xx be linked here? Via LoadLibrary (dlopen) and friends? > I'd volunteer to create such a solution. We build and distribute: OpenOCD -> libftdi Users would download and install libftdi-ftd2xx *instead* of libftdi. Since they have the same ABI, the application cannot tell the difference between the open and closed versions. OpenOCD binaries cannot legally be distributed with the wrapper, only with the the normal libftdi. They should behave the same in all outward function ways; there cannot be any conditional code in OpenOCD to enable the wrapper library. I think that will work. I am not _entirely_ sure, but others can ACK. > > 5) sockets: separate ftd2xx into their own process space > > > > I dislike this idea, and I seem to remember that you disliked it, too, > because it opens doors for all kinds of GPL circumventions that we > don't want. We may not be able to prevent someone from creating such a > solution, but we can deny its upstream inclusion. The genie is out of the bottle. We can create a GPL implementation, and force the proprietary versions to re-implement the driver-side handling themselves. It would be "nicer" to the FTD2XX folk if we licensed the driver-side bits under LGPL... but it appears that neither of us want to be "nice" on this matter. Hurray! We're on the same team. :) Go team! > > 6) libusb+libftdi: The Right Thing To Do ;) > > > > Is this something that's future proof with Microsoft's > signed-drivers-only policy coming up? We can raise money to pay for the signing costs; presumably, they don't need to be signed during development testing. Personally, I think the broader community will end up footing these bills; however, these factors need to be considered by the community in complete detail once the technical details are worked out. After hearing all of the reports induced by the licensing threads, I am afraid that we may have a bit of work to do before we need to worry about signed drivers, sadly; however, I cannot judge the actual status -- our Windows developers need to do that. I asked Michael Fischer in a private e-mail to send me a patch for the TODO list to include all of the things we need to finish this support, but others on the list may have been more appropriate to ask. :) [snip] > > To reiterate, I am now no longer willing to accept offers to do the > work > > that I actually need to survive, to demonstrate that my motives here > > have no profit in them anymore. All previous offers for me to do > paid > > work are now off the table, until all hostilities from the community > > have been ameliorated. I hope this action helps resolve some > tensions. > > > > This is for you to decide. I'd actually appreciate if you were to > rethink your position, because a developer whose able to make at least > part of his living out of the project is definitely going to provide > high qualtiy contributions. > I appreciate you allowing me to do so. I will post another message to restate my position in a way that should both better clarify my original intent but still allow me to survive. And it will take things to a whole... other.... level.... ;) :) Cheers, Zach _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list Openocd-development@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
