Hi all,
I like that we're talking about a policy, but I really feel the policy, as written right now, is specific to ISA blobs, and some of the points do not map very well to non-ISA blobs. I've made some inline comments om that.
A point about ISA blobs and their licensing, is that whatever legalese they come with should not have restrictive clauses. E.g: - no-reverse-engineering/decompilation clause(s) - no-modification clause(s) - only-use-on-<vendorname>-hardware clause(s) Abstracting the lack of source code, any clause which is incompatible with the freedoms afforded by the GPL should be rejected. I realize this sets a high bar, but I think protecting our contributors who do exactly the things I've exemplified should take priority.
Alex
On 10/11/2015 08:35 AM, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Hi all,
on the coreboot conference, we discussed a draft of a policy for inclusion of binaries into the 3rdparty/blobs repository.
If binaries are required, we want them redistributable in 3rdparty/blobs to make users' lives easier, and make it possible to deal with them as good as it is possible with binaries. Having clear rules should also make it easier for the developers at vendors who try to maintain these binaries - no more back-and-forth on gerrit that some more documentation is necessary and so on. Other rules are simply necessary (eg. a license allowing redistribution) for practical reasons.
This doesn't mean we encourage the use of binaries, and to use them, because they still need to be integrated through code in the coreboot repository.
The current draft can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wMdDUAZR2Z9V7hcs3IhIOqw6sYQxb3vPEmbITTCr..., and is open for comments.
The idea is to instate this policy (or something like this) once we found agreement. We can still revise the policy over time.
Patrick
Hi all,
Thanks for the comments. The conference discussion was very helpful. We'll work on this when I land in Denver and vet it posted asap. This should make it clear to vendors and easier on the community to review.
Thanks Patrick, Stefan, Carl-Daniel, and everyone else at the conference for the feedback.
Regards, Marc
On Sun, Oct 11, 2015, 8:28 PM Alex G. mr.nuke.me@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I like that we're talking about a policy, but I really feel the policy, as written right now, is specific to ISA blobs, and some of the points do not map very well to non-ISA blobs. I've made some inline comments om that.
A point about ISA blobs and their licensing, is that whatever legalese they come with should not have restrictive clauses. E.g: - no-reverse-engineering/decompilation clause(s) - no-modification clause(s) - only-use-on-<vendorname>-hardware clause(s) Abstracting the lack of source code, any clause which is incompatible with the freedoms afforded by the GPL should be rejected. I realize this sets a high bar, but I think protecting our contributors who do exactly the things I've exemplified should take priority.
Alex
On 10/11/2015 08:35 AM, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Hi all,
on the coreboot conference, we discussed a draft of a policy for inclusion of binaries into the 3rdparty/blobs repository.
If binaries are required, we want them redistributable in 3rdparty/blobs to make users' lives easier, and make it possible to deal with them as good as it is possible with binaries. Having clear rules should also make it easier for the developers at vendors who try to maintain these binaries - no more back-and-forth on gerrit that some more documentation is necessary and so on. Other rules are simply necessary (eg. a license allowing redistribution) for practical reasons.
This doesn't mean we encourage the use of binaries, and to use them, because they still need to be integrated through code in the coreboot repository.
The current draft can be found at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wMdDUAZR2Z9V7hcs3IhIOqw6sYQxb3vPEmbITTCr... ,
and is open for comments.
The idea is to instate this policy (or something like this) once we found agreement. We can still revise the policy over time.
Patrick
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