Re: [Qemu-devel] [patch] s390-dis.c license

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 17/01/2008, Thiemo Seufer <address@hidden> wrote:
> andrzej zaborowski wrote:
> > On 17/01/2008, Bill C. Riemers <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > According to section 9 of the GPL, you would only have to contact
> > > contributors for code which specified version 2 of the GPL and not 
> > > later...
> >
> > In order to relicense all of qemu, yes, plus contributors of
> > BSD-licensed code, of which there is much more than GPLv2-licensed.
>
> Actually, re-licensing BSD code as GPL is legal (but not nice).
>
> > But there's no reason to relicense qemu. AFAIK there's no problem
> > distributing qemu if it contains GPLv3, GPLv2 and BSD code just as
> > there was no problem until now with GPLv2 and BSD code. So I'm not
> > sure what this change helps.
>
> GPLv2 and GPLv3 have different provisions (e.g. the anti-DRM clause
> in GPLv3). Both exclude further restrictions of any sort. This makes
> them incompatible.

Ouch, right - I should do my reading. However the conflict between the
GPL versions might only restrict the distribution of a qemu binary.
And incorrect relicensing of the code would be illegal already in
source form.

So yes, probably only the GPLv2-only code would need permissions from
authors, BSD should be ok left intact. All LGPL code seems to be v2 or
greater.
Regards