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Re: [Qemu-devel] An opinion on copyright-notice-less qemu files


From: Anthony Liguori
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] An opinion on copyright-notice-less qemu files
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:37:19 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.21) Gecko/20110831 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.13

Hi Richard,

Thanks for posting this!

On 10/26/2011 05:43 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
Hi qemu developers,

WARNING: (1) I am not your lawyer; (2) this is not legal advice; (3)
this is a long post which you will probably find extremely boring
unless you happen to be a licensing geek, which I suspect is not true
of most if not all of you.

My colleague Paolo Bonzini was discussing with me the subject of what
the qemu project should do (if anything) about files in qemu that have
no copyright/license notice, in connection with the recent qemu-devel
subthread on "GPLv3 troubles". In a sense the underlying issue is what
the legal status of such files is.

Paolo correctly identified four possibilities (I am here paraphrasing
how Paolo put them):

1) Assume nothing about the file - therefore, to deal with the GPLv3
compatibility issue, ask all authors for permission to treat as GPLv2+
(GPLv2 or later).

2) Because qemu has a LICENSE file (which, importantly, I am assuming
has been in place more or less from the get-go)

This is only sort of correct. QEMU has been around since about 2003. There has been a LICENSE file for all of it's significant history.

But for a long time period, QEMU contained no GPL code out side linux-user and LGPL code in libcpu. The device model was strictly X11 licensed. The old LICENSE file stated:

+The following points clarify the QEMU licenses:
+
+1) The QEMU virtual CPU core library (libqemu.a) and the QEMU PC
+   system emulator are released under the GNU Lesser General Public
+   License.
+
+2) The Linux user mode QEMU emulator is released under the GNU General
+   Public License.
+
+3) The QEMU Accelerator Module is a proprietary product. It is
+   available without charge. Commercial use of the QEMU Accelerator
+   Module is allowed.
+
+   Redistribution of the QEMU Accelerator Module: any person or
+   organisation wishing to distribute it, for example on a CD or as a
+   binary or source package, must have an explicit authorization from
+   the author.
+
+   The QEMU Accelerator Module is available without any express or
+   implied warranty. In no event will the author be held liable for
+   any damages arising from the use of this software.
+
+4) QEMU is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard.

Around 2007, a decision was made to allow GPL code in the system emulator. At that point in time, the LICENSE text was clarified to it's current content (more or less).

A number of the pre-2007 files lack copyrights and where created before the "QEMU is overall licensed as GPL" text was added.

I don't think this necessarily changes your interpretation significantly but I thought its important to make this clarification at least.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori



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