[coreboot] RFC: draft policy for accepting blob contributions to 3rdparty/blobs

[Alex G.]

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/1wMdDUAZR2Z9V7hcs3IhIOqw6sYQxb3vPEmbITTCrOwU/edit,
> 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
>