[coreboot] Coreboot BSD-style Open Source licence (was: Re: Coreboot or UEFI, who will be the winner.)

[Cristi Magherusan]

On Thu, 2009-12-24 at 01:43 +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> On 24.12.2009 00:56, Guillaume FORTAINE wrote:
> > My question is fairly simple : Would people from the coreboot project agree to release the source code under a BSD-style Open Source licence instead of the GPL ?
> >   
> 
> Sorry, I don't see a way of that happening. Some of the code is derived
> from the GPLv2 Linux kernel, and I don't think you can convince the
> Linux kernel people to change the license to BSD.
> 
> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel

Technically speaking, a ROM image based on coreboot is NOT a statically
linked binary so that every piece of it would be forced to be licensed
under the GPL. It's just an archive format, where this restriction won't
apply.

The payload can be under any license its author may see fit for it, so
for example it's perfectly legal to use the BSD-licensed UEFI payload on
top of the GPL coreboot code, without the fear of infringing the GPL.

Intel chose not to use coreboot just because it won't protect its IP the
way their closed-source part of EFI does. So their Trusted Platform is
actually promoting security by obscurity instead of openness, like most
of the people are doing nowadays.

Best regards,
Cristi

-- 
Cristi Măgherușan, System/Network Engineer
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania
http://cc.utcluj.ro  +40264 401247
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