[U-Boot] [PATCH 0/9] EFI payload / application support

[Tom Rini]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 07:53:24PM +0300, Matwey V. Kornilov wrote:
> 2015-12-25 19:50 GMT+03:00 Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com>:
> > On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 09:53:22AM +0100, Alexander Graf wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 25.12.15 04:29, Tom Rini wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 02:57:47PM +0100, Alexander Graf wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> This is my Christmas present for my openSUSE friends :).
> >> >>
> >> >> U-Boot is a great project for embedded devices. However, convincing
> >> >> everyone involved that only for "a few oddball ARM devices" we need to
> >> >> support different configuration formats from grub2 when all other platforms
> >> >> (PPC, System Z, x86) are standardized on a single format is a nightmare.
> >> >>
> >> >> So we started to explore alternatives. At first, people tried to get
> >> >> grub2 running using the u-boot api interface. However, FWIW that one
> >> >> doesn't support relocations, so you need to know where to link grub2 to
> >> >> at compile time. It also seems to be broken more often than not. And on
> >> >> top of it all, it's a one-off interface, so yet another thing to maintain.
> >> >>
> >> >> That led to a nifty idea. What if we can just implement the EFI application
> >> >> protocol on top of U-Boot? Then we could compile a single grub2 binary for
> >> >> uEFI based systems and U-Boot based systems and as soon as that one's loaded,
> >> >> everything looks and feels (almost) the same.
> >> >>
> >> >> This patch set is the result of pursuing this endeavor.
> >> >
> >> > So, I owe the whole codebase a real review.  My very quick question
> >> > however is, aside from what you had to borrow from wine, can you license
> >> > everything else as GPL v2 or later rather than LGPL?
> >>
> >> I'm personally a pretty big fan of the LGPL, since it's a very
> >> reasonable compromise between closed and open source IMHO ;).
> >>
> >> Is there a particular reason you're asking for this? LGPL code is fully
> >> compatible with GPL code and the resulting binary would be GPL anyway
> >> because FWIW you can't compile U-Boot without GPL code inside.
> >
> > The general rules for U-Boot code are to be GPL v2 or later.  U-Boot is
> > (and always will be) a GPL v2 only project as there's simply too much
> > Linux kernel code that we want to leverage.  We do make special
> > exceptions at times for very good reasons (like include/android_image.h
> > is the authorative BSD-2 clause copy of that information) and I've even
> > told some companies that for crypto-auth-sensitive stuff they can do GPL
> > v2 only in their submission (again, due to U-Boot always being a v2 only
> > project).
> >
> > So, I'm not gonig to reject the EFI loader code if you say no, you won't
> > re-license it as GPL v2 (or v2 and later) but I'd really appreciate it.
> > Thanks!
> 
> If EFI loader is GPLed, then is it possible to use it to run non-GPLed
> (proprietary) EFI applications?

Yes.  Absolutely.  We've (pratically) always supported running non-GPL
payloads.  VxWorks has been supported for ages and ages and ages for
example.  There may be a thought experiment or two required about
callbacks but that's part of why we've had CONFIG_API, iirc.

-- 
Tom
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