[coreboot] flashrom licensing

Peter Stuge peter at stuge.se
Wed Jun 24 15:54:39 CEST 2009


Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> I wanted to add support for the TotalPhase Cheetah to flashrom, but
> I have to use the proprietary driver library for that. I'm not
> aware of any free alternative to that driver, so there may be a
> conflict with the GPL.

There would be no issue, if flasher drivers were not linked with
flashrom, but rather separate processes implementing a well-defined
interface. Maybe you remember the discussion about flashrom plugins.


> If the Cheetah driver library is considered to be a system library,
> the GPL allows linking against that library.

Cheetah is not essential for the system where flashrom is running so
I do not think that can be argumented successfully.


//Peter




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