Planning/Relicensing

Overview

In order to share code with binutils, QEMU might need to relicense to GPLv2 or later since binutils is GPLv3. While the sharing of code with the Linux kernel might present an insurmountable problem, relicensing at least some of the files may still provide benefits, and can help other open source programs.

How to Help

To relicense a file, use the following git command to get a list of authors:

git log --format:"%an <%ae>" -- file.c

Check this wiki page to see if the author has already committed to relicensing. If so, add their Signed-off-by to the patch. For any author that hasn't already committed to relicensing, contact that individual and ask them if they are willing to relicense and collect their Signed-off-by.

Commitments to Relicense

If you or your company is willing to relicense your past contributions from GPLv2 to GPLv2+, please send an email to qemu-devel stating that explicitly and then link to that message on this wiki.

The following people expressed their agreement on the mailing list [need to link to the messages]:

• Andrzej Zaborowski (balrog) for GPLv2+ [1]
• Blue Swirl for any GPLv2 or GPLv3-compatible license [2]
• Stefan Weil for GPLv2+ [3]
• Dor Laor for all Red Hat contributions for GPLv2+ [4]
• Michael Walle for GPLv2+ [5]

Files under LGPLv2/LGPLv2.1

These do not need relicensing even if the "or later" clause were missing (see section 3):

block/qed.c
block/qed-check.c
block/qed-cluster.c
block/qed-gencb.c
block/qed.h
block/qed-l2-cache.c
block/qed-table.c
hw/arm_pic.c
hw/ccid-card-emulated.c
hw/fmopl.c
hw/i2c.c
hw/lsi53c895a.c
hw/pc.c
hw/pl110.c
hw/ptimer.c
hw/scsi-disk.c
hw/scsi-generic.c
hw/smbus.c
hw/usb-msd.c
hw/usb-serial.c
hw/versatile_pci.c
check-qdict.c
check-qfloat.c
check-qint.c
check-qjson.c
check-qlist.c
check-qstring.c
error.c
json-lexer.c
json-parser.c
json-streamer.c
qbool.c
qdict.c
qemu-coroutine.c
qerror.c
qfloat.c
qint.c
qjson.c
qlist.c
qstring.c
test-coroutine.c

Files under GPLv2+

These would need relicensing in order to do a blanket relicensing of QEMU (it is debatable whether this requires authorization of the copyright holders). However, the license is GPLv3-compatible, so they can be left as is: overall, QEMU would still be distributed as GPLv3, but the code from this files could be reused in GPLv2 projects:

block/vdi.c
hw/alpha_typhoon.c
hw/ccid-card-passthru.c
hw/empty_slot.c
hw/ppc440_bamboo.c
hw/ppc440.c
hw/usb-ccid.c
blockdev.c
device_tree.c
dma-helpers.c
kvm-all.c
kvm-stub.c
linux-aio.c
qemu-error.c
qemu-ga.c
qemu-io.c
qemu-thread-posix.c
qemu-thread-win32.c

The situation of this file is unclear:

net/tap-win32.c

Files under "GPL"

These files can be interpreted as being "GPLv1+" or "GPLv2+" (the difference is mostly theoretical, nobody is using GPLv1 anymore). Relicensing is thus not needed.

hw/a9mpcore.c
hw/an5206.c
hw/arm11mpcore.c
hw/arm_boot.c
hw/arm_gic.c
hw/arm_sysctl.c
hw/arm_timer.c
hw/armv7m.c
hw/armv7m_nvic.c
hw/dummy_m68k.c
hw/integratorcp.c
hw/max7310.c
hw/mcf5206.c
hw/mcf5208.c
hw/mcf_fec.c
hw/mcf_intc.c
hw/mcf_uart.c
hw/mpcore.c
hw/pl011.c
hw/pl022.c
hw/pl050.c
hw/pl061.c
hw/pl080.c
hw/pl181.c
hw/pl190.c
hw/pxa2xx.c
hw/pxa2xx_dma.c
hw/pxa2xx_gpio.c
hw/pxa2xx_pic.c
hw/pxa2xx_timer.c
hw/realview.c
hw/realview_gic.c
hw/sh_intc.c
hw/sh_timer.c
hw/smc91c111.c
hw/ssd0303.c
hw/ssd0323.c
hw/stellaris.c
hw/stellaris_enet.c
hw/stellaris_input.c
hw/versatilepb.c
hw/wm8750.c

Files without license

Need to be audited for GPLv2-only material, but otherwise can probably be considered GPLv2+ (reasoning here):

audio/audio_pt_int.c   malc, Stefan Weil
audio/wavcapture.c     malc, Fabrice Bellard, Red Hat, Siemens
block/raw.c            (extracted from block/raw-posix.c, which is MIT/BSD)
                       IBM, Blue Swirl, Red Hat, hch, John Arbuckle, Stefan Weil, Aurelien Jarno, Hervé Poussineau, AMD, Fam Zheng, Frediano Ziglio

cache-utils.c          malc, Juergen Lock
disas.c
envlist.c              Aurelien Jarno, Blue Swirl
path.c                 Fabrice Bellard, CodeSourcery, ths, Stefan Weil, Thayne Harbaugh
hw/mipsnet.c           ths, Red Hat, CodeSourcery, Stefan Weil, Hervé Poussineau, Aurelien Jarno, Siemens
hw/mips_r4k.c          ths, ....
hw/qdev-addr.c         Red Hat
hw/qdev-properties.c   Red Hat, IBM, AMD, Google, VALinux (Isaku), Siemens, Kusanagi Kouichi, Stefan Weil
hw/spapr_hcall.c       IBM, Blue Swirl, SuSE
hw/spapr_vty.c         IBM, Red Hat
hw/tc58128.c           Samuel Tardieu, Blue Swirl, CodeSourcery, IBM
hw/usb-bus.c           Red Hat, Blue Swirl, Siemens, CodeSourcery, TeLeMan
hw/usb-desc.c          Red Hat, IBM, Brad Hards
hw/xen_devconfig.c     Red Hat, Blue Swirl, Siemens, IBM
hw/xen_domainbuild.c   Red Hat, Blue Swirl, IBM, Citrix
linux-user/strace.c
linux-user/uaccess.c
cursor.c               Red Hat, IBM
qemu-config.c          Red Hat, IBM, SuSE, Blue Swirl, Citrix, Siemens, Kusanagi Kouichi, LLuis Villanova
qemu-sockets.c         Red Hat, IBM, Blue Swirl, Nick Thomas, Vibi Sreenivasan
*/machine.c            (extracted from vl.c, which is MIT/BSD)

Files Needing Relicensing

Copyright owners already tracked

block/raw-posix-aio.h (header?)  Red Hat, hch
hw/msix.c                        Red Hat, Blue Swirl, VALinux (Isaku), SuSE, Siemens, IBM
hw/smbios.c                      Stefan Weil, IBM, Blue Swirl, HP
net/checksum.c                   Red Hat
aio.c                            IBM, Red Hat, SuSE, Nolan Leake, Blue Swirl
block-migration.c                IBM, Blue Swirl, Siemens, Red Hat, malc, NTT (Yoshi), Pierre Riteau, 
buffered_file.c                  IBM, Blue Swirl, Red Hat, Pierre Riteau, malc
compatfd.c                       IBM, Red Hat, AdaCore, SuSE, Siemens
hmp.c                            Red Hat, IBM
iov.c                            Red Hat, SuSE (incl. hw/iov.c)
memory.c                         IBM, Red Hat, Michael Walle, Blue Swirl, Siemens,
migration.c                      IBM, Charles Duffy, Siemens, Red Hat, malc, NTT (Yoshi)
migration-exec.c                 IBM, Charles Duffy, Siemens, Red Hat, malc, Blue Swirl
migration-fd.c                   IBM, Red Hat, Siemens
migration-unix.c                 IBM, Red Hat, Siemens, malc, Blue Swirl
migration-tcp.c                  IBM, Hervé Poussineau, Charles Duffy, Siemens, Red Hat, malc, Stefan Weil, NTT (Yoshi), Blue Swirl
module.c                         IBM, Blue Swirl
notify.c                         IBM, Siemens
pflib.c                          Red Hat, IBM
posix-aio-compat.c               IBM, Blue Swirl, Siemens, malc, Red Hat, hch, Blue Swirl, Kirill Shutemov, Frediano Ziglio
qemu-tool.c                      IBM, CodeSourcery, Stefan Weil, Blue Swirl, Siemens, Red Hat, Frediano Ziglio
qmp.c                            Red Hat, IBM
xen-all.c                        Red Hat, IBM, Citrix, Siemens, Intel
xen-stub.c                       Citrix, Intel

Entirely hosted in git

block/rbd.c
block/sheepdog.c
hw/ac97.c (VirtualBox)           targets using it: x86, MIPS, PPC
hw/acpi.c                        targets using it: x86, MIPS
hw/acpi_piix4.c                  targets using it: x86, MIPS
hw/apm.c                         targets using it: x86, MIPS
hw/bitbang_i2c.c                 targets using it: ARM
hw/bonito.c                      targets using it: MIPS
hw/collie.c                      targets using it: ARM
hw/ds1338.c                      targets using it: ARM
hw/ivshmem.c                     targets using it: x86, PPC
hw/kvmclock.c                    targets using it: x86
hw/lan9118.c                     targets using it: ARM
hw/marvell_88w8618_audio.c       targets using it: ARM
hw/mips_fulong2e.c               targets using it: MIPS
hw/ssi.c                         targets using it: ARM
hw/strongarm.c                   targets using it: ARM
hw/vexpress.c                    targets using it: ARM
hw/vhost.c                       targets using it: x86, PPC
hw/vhost_net.c                   targets using it: x86, PPC
hw/virtio-pci.c       
hw/virtio-serial-bus.c
hw/vt82c686.c                    targets using it: MIPS
hw/z2.c                          targets using it: ARM
xen-mapcache.c                   targets using it: x86

Also, some authors in svn

Need more care, since git really lists the committer as author for svn commits.

hw/ads7846.c                     targets using it: ARM
hw/ecc.c                         targets using it: ARM, SPARC
hw/framebuffer.c                 targets using it: ARM, LM32
hw/gumstix.c                     targets using it: ARM
hw/mainstone.c                   targets using it: ARM
hw/max111x.c                     targets using it: ARM
hw/mst_fpga.c                    targets using it: ARM
hw/musicpal.c                    targets using it: ARM
hw/nand.c                        targets using it: ARM, CRIS
hw/pl031.c                       targets using it: ARM
hw/pxa2xx_keypad.c               targets using it: ARM
hw/pxa2xx_lcd.c                  targets using it: ARM
hw/pxa2xx_mmci.c                 targets using it: ARM
hw/pxa2xx_pcmcia.c               targets using it: ARM
hw/spitz.c                       targets using it: ARM
hw/ssi-sd.c                      targets using it: ARM
hw/tc6393xb.c                    targets using it: ARM
hw/tosa.c                        targets using it: ARM
hw/virtio-balloon.c
hw/virtio-blk.c
hw/virtio.c
hw/virtio-console.c
hw/virtio-net.c
hw/xen_backend.c                 targets using it: x86
hw/xen_disk.c                    targets using it: x86
hw/xen_nic.c                     targets using it: x86

Based on Linux kernel code

linux-user/elfload.c
linux-user/floatload.c
linux-user/linuxload.c