[coreboot] YABEL: Yet another (legacy) BIOS Emulation Layer

[Jordan Crouse]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Jordan Crouse wrote:
>>>> Any thoughts?
>>>>
>>> Very very cool Patrick. If it has a BSD license it should be no
>>> problem for
>>> coreboot. I say the more payloads the better :-)
>> Incorrect Joseph - most legal opinions are that BSD and GPL are
>> incompatible, so it is a problem for coreboot.  Not a problem for
>> libpayload though - so we can borrow what we need.
> Well, obviously as long as we carry around a copy of x86emu (which is
> BSD, not GPL), we can accept BSD licensed patches to that code.
> 
> I'm a bit surprised about "most legal opinions". Whose opinions are
> they? Any pointers? Nobody ever complained about me linking libpayload
> into FILO, for example, so it's not that incompatible). Do I have to
> drop libpayload again?

I'll clarify - the GPL is incompatible with the original BSD license 
with the advertising clause [1].  I'm not sure if YABEL falls into that 
area, but I generally dislike mixing BSD and GPL to avoid any such 
arguments. I didn't know that x86emu was BSD, but just another great 
reason to get rid of it all together.

Linking is something completely different - the reason why the 
libpayload code is BSD is so you can apply whatever license you want to 
the final product.  You aren't violating the rights of either the 
copyright holders of libpayload or the copyright holders of FILO if you 
link a BSDed library in a GPLed program, or in a proprietary binary for 
that matter.  You only get into trouble when you copy the BSD code into 
your product and don't retain the copyright notices.  Are you doing that?

Jordan

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD