drm core/helpers and MIT license

[Simon Ser]

Adding zeising at FreeBSD.org for FreeBSD. I'll try to see if I can ping
some NetBSD/OpenBSD folks too.

On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 4:03 PM, Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Dave and me chatted about this last week on irc. Essentially we have:
>
> $ git grep SPDX.*GPL -- ':(glob)drivers/gpu/drm/c'
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_client.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_damage_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 OR MIT
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_dp_cec.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_edid_load.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_fb_cma_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_format_helper.c:/ SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_cma_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier:
> GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_framebuffer_helper.c://
> SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_shmem_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_ttm_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier:
> GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_gem_vram_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier:
> GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_hdcp.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_lease.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_mipi_dbi.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_of.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_simple_kms_helper.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier:
> GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_sysfs.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_vma_manager.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 OR MIT
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_vram_helper_common.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier:
> GPL-2.0-or-later
> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_writeback.c:// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
>
> One is GPL+MIT, so ok, and one is a default GPL-only header from
> Greg's infamous patch (so could probably be changed to MIT license
> header). I only looked at .c sources, since headers are worse wrt
> having questionable default headers. So about 18 files with clear GPL
> licenses thus far in drm core/helpers.
>
> Looking at where that code came from, it is mostly from GPL-only
> drivers (we have a lot of those nowadays), so seems legit non-MIT
> licensed. Question is now what do we do:
>
> -   Nothing, which means GPL will slowly encroach on drm core/helpers,
>     which is roughly the same as ...
>
> -   Throw in the towel on MIT drm core officially. Same as above, except
>     lets just make it official.
>
> -   Try to counter this, which means at least a) relicensing a bunch of
>     stuff b) rewriting a bunch of stuff c) making sure that's ok with
>     everyone, there's a lot of GPL-by-default for the kernel (that's how
>     we got most of the above code through merged drivers I think). I
>     suspect that whomever cares will need to put in the work to make this
>     happen (since it will need a pile of active resistance at least).
>
>     Cc maintainers/driver teams who might care most about this.
>
>     Also if people could cc *bsd, they probably care and I don't know best
>     contacts for graphics stuff (or anything else really at all).
>
>     Cheers, Daniel
>     --
>     Daniel Vetter
>     Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
>     +41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch
>
>
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