[U-Boot] API License Terms

[Daniel Sherwood]

Wolfgang

> > Please can someone clarify the following points regarding the
'Consumer
> > API' which we wish to use to access the environment from the core
> > application of a commercial closed source product.
> 
> There is no such thing as a "consumer API".
> 
> > 1)       Is it true that the so called 'consumer application' can
use
> > this API and remain closed source - if so, where in the license
> > information is this made clear?
> 
> I guess you might be referring to standalone applications here. And
> the licensing for these is described right at the beginning of the
> license file "COPYING".
[Daniel Sherwood] No, I am referring to the code contributed by Rafel
under api/* and examples/api/* (although these directories may have been
renamed more recently).  

> The API code implemented by Rafal (abi/* and examples/abi/*) is *not*
> part of  the  exception  for  standalone  programs;  instead,  it  is
> licensed under GPL. The source code makes this pretty clear.
[Daniel Sherwood] The include/api_public.h header file is clearly dual
licensed as GPLv2/BSD implying that it can be used as a public API from
non-GPL code - indeed I believe there are examples around of this being
accessed from BSD.  Surely this is already effectively an exception (as
BSD is not released under GPLv2 but can link with this API).

> Of course you can always reconsider and release your code under GPL -
> that would be the most natural thing given  the  fact  that  you  are
> taking man-years worth of source code for free.
[Daniel Sherwood] We will be releasing the changes and improvements we
have made to u-Boot itself as part of our project (the main one being
support for digital signature checking in the boot code), however we are
not in a position to release our core application - the only link we
have with u-Boot code is that we also wish to access the environment
variables.  If we have no other option, we will write clean versions of
getenv, setenv and saveenv for our application.

> > Also, following on from these points, how would we go about
extending
> > the API?  Specifically, we would like to add a saveenv function to
the
> > API - is it legitimate for us to simply extend the API to add this
> > functionality - provided we publish our changes to u-boot as per the
GPL
> > - without compromising our core application code as closed source?
> 
> Most probably you will need to include header files in addition to
> those explicitly allowed in the "COPYING" file. This would require
> you to release your code under GPL.
Indeed, we would need to include api_public.h (which we can do under the
BSD license), therefore it becomes an issue of a) the legitimacy of
locating and calling the syscall function from our application and b)
extending the available syscall within u-Boot (which of course would be
released under our GPL obligations).

Cheers

Daniel 


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