Hi,
Am 15.11.24 um 05:43 schrieb Greg KH:
On Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 11:49:04AM +0100, Werner Sembach wrote:
Hello,
Am 14.11.24 um 11:31 schrieb Uwe Kleine-König:
Hello,
the kernel modules provided by Tuxedo on
https://gitlab.com/tuxedocomputers/development/packages/tuxedo-drivers
are licensed under GPLv3 or later. This is incompatible with the
kernel's license and so makes it impossible for distributions and other
third parties to support these at least in pre-compiled form and so
limits user experience and the possibilities to work on mainlining these
drivers.
This incompatibility is created on purpose to control the upstream
process. Seehttps://fosstodon.org/@kernellogger/113423314337991594 for
a nice summary of the situation and some further links about the issue.
Note that the pull request that fixed the MODULE_LICENSE invocations to
stop claiming GPL(v2) compatibility was accepted and then immediately
reverted "for the time being until the legal stuff is sorted out"
(https://gitlab.com/tuxedocomputers/development/packages/tuxedo-drivers/-/commit/a8c09b6c2ce6393fe39d8652d133af9f06cfb427).
As already being implied by that commit message, this is sadly not an issue
that can be sorted out over night.
We ended up in this situation as MODULE_LICENSE("GPL") on its own does not
hint at GPL v2, if one is not aware of the license definition table in the
documentation.
That's why it is documented, to explain this very thing. Please don't
suggest that documenting this is somehow not providing a hint. That's
just not going to fly with any lawyer who reads any of this, sorry.
You are right, that's why when I became aware of the situation this Monday
https://gitlab.com/tuxedocomputers/development/packages/tuxedo-drivers/-/commit/9db67459510f18084694c597ff1ea57ef1842f4e
I got the gears to resolve this into moving (me playing devils advocate here is
directly related to this
https://lore.kernel.org/all/17276996-dcca-4ab5-a64f-0e76514c5dc7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/)
and then returned on working on the code rewrite for upstream (
https://lore.kernel.org/all/8847423c-22ec-4775-9119-de3e0ddb5204@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
is directly related to that), because I'm a developer not a lawyer.
Then I get called a liar and hit with the nuclear option not even full 3 days
later, while I'm working on resolving the issue and in parallel working on
improving the code for it to be actually accepted by upstream.
If you want prove of my blissful ignorance from just last week please take a
look at my comment here:
https://gitlab.com/tuxedocomputers/development/packages/tuxedo-drivers/-/merge_requests/21#note_2201702758
Now trying to be constructive: Can you give me a timeframe to resolve the
license issue before this is merged?
Kind regards,
Werner Sembach
greg k-h
