Re: [DistroKit] [PATCH] add GPL-2.0-only as a project license

[Roland Hieber <rhi@pengutronix.de>]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 09:56:29AM +0100, Robert Schwebel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 08:47:02AM +0100, Robert Schwebel wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 08:41:07AM +0100, Alexander Dahl wrote:
> > > so DistroKit itself is GPLv2 only. What would that mean for my BSP if I used 
> > > DistroKit as a pxtdist base layer?
> > 
> > In fact, that's something we'll have to take care about - that's an
> > explicitly intended usecase.
> > 
> > Stay tuned, we'll discuss how to solve this.
> 
> I thought about it a bit more, and the solution is easy: ptxdist itself
> is of course GPLv2-only as well, and so is DistroKit and your own BSP.
> 
> The ptxdist license has a clarification in its COPYING file (since at least
> 2003, which is the begin of the git history):
> 
>   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.
> 
>   Note: PTXdist is a build system which generates a distribution for
>   embedded systems. This license does only cover the build system itself
>   and doesn't affect the license of managed software in any way, even if
>   it might be distributed together with the build system.
> 
>   Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de>
> 
> The clarification was modelled after the equivalent in the Linux kernel
> (clarification that userspace using syscalls is intended use, not derivation)
> at that time, which has nowadays been SPDXified as well:
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/COPYING
> 
> You can put whatever proprietary applications you want to put into your BSP
> without being affected by the GPL that way, and it is GPLv2, not v3, so there
> are no restrictions for things like trusted boot. So I think putting DistroKit
> under GPLv2 is no restriction to what we already have.
> 
> We should try to find a similar solution as the kernel's.

Yes, I thought about that too shortly after sending the patch, and I
came to the same conclusion that the note in PTXdist is a good idea.
Additionally, we should emphasize that while any changes to the files
contained in DistroKit (and PTXdist) itself must be made under the same
license (noted in the respective file), using it as a base (or base
layer) for new BSPs is regarded as "mere aggregation" [0], so inherited
layers can use any license they want.

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#MereAggregation

 - Roland

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Roland Hieber, Pengutronix e.K.          | r.hieber@pengutronix.de     |
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