Hi Jon, On 03/17/2015 12:48 PM, Jon Masters wrote: > On 03/16/2015 03:46 PM, Peter Hurley wrote: >> On 03/16/2015 02:35 PM, Hans de Goede wrote: >>> To be clear about my aarch64 remark, that relates to the behavior of aarch64 acpi using >>> machines, those will also output to both a serial tty and tty0 when the acpi equivalent >>> of stdout-path is present and points to a serial tty. >> >> I already made comments addressing the unsuitability of the license for the >> aarch64 acpi console; > > Yes, you did. However, I believe you might have outdated information. > Have you read the SPCR in the past few months, or are you looking at a > version prior to update that was made in October of 2014? The version of the Serial Port Console Redirection Table specification I was referring to is downloadable here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn639132%28v=vs.85%29.aspx That page says Last Updated: October 21, 2014 The cover page of that downloaded specification has this text: " Patent Notice. Microsoft provides you certain patent rights for implementations of this specification under the terms of Microsoft’s Community Promise, available at http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/community-promise/default.aspx. Version 1.02 — October 9, 2014 " >> the proposed SPCR table format is patented by Microsoft and >> licensed incompatibly with GPLv2. > > Can you be specific about your concerns? The license has already been > changed once (I instigated the request that lead to that change to drop > several pages of terse terms that used to cover the first few pages). I > have found the Microsoft team extremely responsive and amenable to > resolving issues, so if you would do us the service of articulating what > the concern is, I'll reach back out and get that addressed. I have a > direct line into their server and legal teams to discuss this issue. Well, I'm deducing somewhat here because the code that would use the SPCR table format has not been submitted. So I don't _know_ what license(s) you intend to submit with. But assuming you're using some part of the SPCR specification to implement the aarch64 acpi console, then my concern stems from the incompatibility between GPL v2 and the Microsoft Community Promise license. In order for you to submit code to mainline, you (or rather, the submitter) must certify that you have the legal right to do so. That's spelled out in Documentation/SubmittingPatches, under 'Developer's Certficate of Origin 1.1'. So if you and Microsoft have worked out some deal where Microsoft has licensed the SPCR spec to you under GPL v2 terms, then, great! there is no problem. However, if Microsoft is licensing your use of the SPCR specification under the Microsoft Community Promise and you intend license your submission with the same, then the problem is that the Microsoft Community Promise License asserts additional limitations which are not compatible with GPL v2; specifically, this text: [from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecifications/dn646766 ] "If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation made or used by you." IOW, if I sue Microsoft for patent infringement ste,ming from their use of Microsoft XML Document Object Model Level 1 Standards Support Document (which infringes on patents I own), then my embedded aarch64 kernel - which merely contains your implementation - is no longer covered under the terms of the license. Now, that's just my interpretation of it; maybe the Linux Foundation's lawyers would see it differently. Regards, Peter Hurley -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html