On Wed, Mar 4, 2026 at 11:12 PM Lex Bailey <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 27/02/2026 00:04, Alistair Francis wrote: > > Is new MIT code allowed in QEMU? > > > > Alistair > > I believe so? if not then this will be a big barrier to contributing > this code. > > checkpatch.pl told me: "Saw acceptable license 'MIT' but note > 'GPL-2.0-or-later' is preferred for new files unless the code is derived > from a source file with an existing declared license that must be > retained. Please explain the license choice in the commit message." > > In this case "a source file with an existing declared license that must > be retained" describes many of the files on our fork, since these are > already published under the MIT license. (on our github repo)
If it's published by you you can relicense it as 'GPL-2.0-or-later'. > > I suppose perhaps you could interpret it as meaning only "a source file > already in the repository". I would assume it means if there is an existing MIT licensed file published by someone else then the original MIT license can be retained (it must legally be retained, I just mean that QEMU will accept it). But in this case it's just lowrisc code, so it can be re-published as GPLv2 as you own the copyright. Alistair > > Can someone clarify this please? >
