> On May 30, 2015, at 1:59 PM, Jeroen Hofstee <linux-arm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi, > > On 22-05-15 12:05, Yann Droneaud wrote: >> 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. >>> >> > > obviously these files should be reusable. If there is a license issue > with that it should be fixed. cc-ing freebsd-arm@xxxxxxxxxxx. FreeBSD segregates the files that its contributors have written and are under BSDL from those that are received from upstream and may be under BSDL+GPL or just GPL in its source tree. The source is shipped, the binaries are not, at least by the FreeBSD project. The FreeBSD project used to create its own custom dts files that were incompatible with anything except FreeBSD. However, apart from a few stragglers, we’ve converted all our supported platforms to using the ‘vendor supplied’ dts files, which means we follow the documented conventions found in Linux, as well as many of the strange Linuxisms that seep into this or that .dts file. Following the standard here and accepting some potentially GPLd code into the tree given its limited scope and already segregated nature. It is an open question to what extent the mere-aggregation clause would apply to the typical use of placing the dtb into a filesystem that u-boot then passes along applies. And if that same reasoning applies to a binary bundle containing both the kernel and the dtb file. It’s also an open question the extent to which copyright applies to the dts files since they are, in theory at least, just an expression of facts and there’s generally only one way to correctly express those facts in a dts file. The GPL’d files aren’t stopping anybody from creating proprietary software. People that really care will rewrite the files from scratch anyway. People that don’t care.. well, one need look no further than the difficulty of getting source code to different SoC support packages for the kernel in the Android world to see how much some people care about GPL compliance and how much it really stops them from doing what they want. Than again, I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. Warner
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