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Re: [Qemu-devel] SoftFloat licensing in Linux kernel
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From: |
Anthony Liguori |
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Subject: |
Re: [Qemu-devel] SoftFloat licensing in Linux kernel |
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Date: |
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:04:32 -0500 |
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User-agent: |
Notmuch/0.15.2+77~g661dcf8 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/23.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) |
Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:
> On 29 April 2013 11:37, Peter Maydell <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On 11 April 2013 07:49, Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> QEMU uses the John Hauser's SoftFloat library. It seems the matter
>>> isn't settled yet in Linux but the FSF says the license is
>>> incompatible with GPLv2.
>>
>> So the resolution determined for the kernel is that they actually
>> took the softfloat code at a version before the indemnification
>> clause appeared in upstream-softfloat's license:
>> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2013-April/163904.html
>>
>> Given that that change only happened ~2010 it seems pretty
>> likely that QEMU's softfloat code also predates it; has
>> anybody done the necessary digging in our version control
>> history to confirm?
>
> ...rats, looks like (a) the license change was earlier, at
> the upstream version 2->2b boundary and (b) QEMU's softfloat
> is based on 2b, not 2 (as the kernel's is.)
The kernel code is quite different than the QEMU code too. Looks like
it would be quite a lot of work to switch to the kernel implementation.
That said, I think it's our best long term option...
Regards,
Anthony Liguori
>
> -- PMM