Hi,
[removing Cc: licensing@xxxxxxx]
Le vendredi 22 mai 2015 à 12:05 +0200, Yann Droneaud a écrit :
> Le mardi 05 mai 2015 à 11:41 -0500, Rob Herring a écrit :
> > On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 5:05 AM, Yann Droneaud <ydroneaud@xxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I believe Device Tree Blob (.dtb file) built from kernel's Device
> > >
> > > Tree
> > > Sources (.dts, which #include .dtsi, which #include .h) using
> > > Device
> > > Tree Compiler (dtc) are covered by GNU General Public Licence v2
> > > (GPLv2), but cannot find any reference.
> >
> > By default yes, but we've been steering people to dual license them
> >
> > GPL/BSD.
> >
>
> Can you give me the rationale behind such dual licenses requirement ?
>
> If a BSD .dts includes GPLv2 .h, the whole is covered by GPLv2,
> so I cannot find a case where a BSD covered .dts file could be used
> alone within BSD license rights.
>
> > > As most .dtsi in arch/arm/boot/dts/ are covered by GPLv2, and,
> > > as most .h in include/dt-bindings/ are also covered by GPLv2,
> > > the source code is likely covered by GPLv2.
> > >
> > > Then this source code is translated in a different language
> > > (flattened
> > > device tree), so the resulting translation is also likely covered
> > >
> > > by
> > > GPLv2.
> > >
> > > So, when I'm proposed to download a .dtb file from a random
> > > vendor,
> > > can I require to get the associated source code ?
> >
> > I believe so yes. However, you already have the "source" for the
> > most
> > part. Just run "dtc -I dtb -O dts <dtb file>". You loose the
> > preprocessing and include structure though (not necessarily a bad
> > thing IMO).
> >
> > Then the question is what is the license on that generated dts!
> >
>
> That's also a good question.
>
> Is this a form a "reverse engineering" with all the legalese burden ?
>
> Anyway without a clear information attached to the DTB, it's
> difficult
> to tell which licence cover the "decompiled" version.
>
> > > Anyway, for a .dtb file generated from kernel sources, it's
> > > rather
> > > painful to look after all .dts, .dtsi, .h, to find what kind of
> > > licences are applicables, as some are covered by BSD, dual
> > > licensed
> > > (any combination of X11, MIT, BSD, GPLv2).
> >
> > I imagine the includes cause some licensing discrepancies if you
> > dug
> > into it.
> >
>
> It's a pity, and it's probably something to sort out.
>
> DTB files produced as part of kernel compilation should have a well
> known license attached by default.
>
I've added licensing@xxxxxxxx in Cc: in my previous message to have an
advice on this subject, but I failed to notice licensing@xxxxxxx
is not a mailing list: I was assigned request ID [gnu.org #1017262].
Regards.
--
Yann Droneaud
OPTEYA
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