Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Spice project is now open

[Anthony Liguori]

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 12/11/2009 10:58 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > The concerns have been 1) they will be abused with the introduction
> > of proprietary plugins
>
> How so?

A typical scenario is someone develops a closed source plugin, but does 
not distribute it with the original piece of software thinking that they 
aren't creating a derived work because there's no combination.

But it's not necessary to get too tied up in this one.  The later are 
more important.

> > 2) we would have tremendous difficulty maintaining a stable plugin abi
>
> Then don't promise it.  GCC doesn't for example.  (And it solves 
> problem 1 too!...)

GCC is not the best example since it's support for plugins are 
relatively new.  It's bad for users.  They start using a plugin for one 
version and they really like it, they want to update to a new version of 
the base program and now their plugin no longer works.  The plugin has 
gone unmaintained and now they have to choose between the plugin and 
updating the base program.

> > 3) they would create stability issues
> > in qemu because the plugin quality cannot be controlled.
>
> How is this different from 3rd party modules in the kernel?

I don't think the kernel is an example of it working smoothly.  It's a 
constant source of frustration for users and people are constantly doing 
ugly things wrt licensing.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori