[edk2-devel] contribution of code licensed other than bsd+patent

[Leif Lindholm]

Hi Liming,

Yes, the license is not a problem.

My concern is that third party code, regardless of license,
contributed while the TianoCore Contribution agreement was used was
covered by the clause:
    * Contributor grants a license (with the right to sublicense) under
      claims of Contributor's patents that Contributor can license that
      are infringed by the Contribution (as delivered by Contributor) to
      make, use, distribute, sell, offer for sale, and import the
      Contribution and derivative works thereof solely to the minimum
      extent necessary for licensee to exercise the granted copyright
      license; this patent license applies solely to those portions of
      the Contribution that are unmodified. No hardware per se is
      licensed.

whereas code that is contributed now under a bsd+patent license is
covered by:
---
Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, each copyright holder
and contributor hereby grants to those receiving rights under this license
a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
(except for failure to satisfy the conditions of this license) patent
license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise
transfer this software, where such license applies only to those patent
claims, already acquired or hereafter acquired, licensable by such copyright
holder or contributor that are necessarily infringed by:

(a) their Contribution(s) (the licensed copyrights of copyright holders and
    non-copyrightable additions of contributors, in source or binary form)
    alone; or

(b) combination of their Contribution(s) with the work of authorship to
    which such Contribution(s) was added by such copyright holder or
    contributor, if, at the time the Contribution is added, such addition
    causes such combination to be necessarily infringed. The patent license
    shall not apply to any other combinations which include the
    Contribution.

Except as expressly stated above, no rights or licenses from any copyright
holder or contributor is granted under this license, whether expressly, by
implication, estoppel or otherwise.
---

Non-bsd+patent contributions being brought into the tree after we
dropped the contribution agreement is not covered by any such explicit
patent grants.

And I think we need to have an official view on that - whether that
view is
- that's not a problem
- that can be problematic, but we can decide on a case by case basis,
  and may request {extra steps} as part of the contribution
- that is not acceptable

And I think that view should be encoded in Readme.md, next to the list
of licenses we are willing to consider for inclusion.

Best Regards,

Leif

On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 03:24:25PM +0000, Gao, Liming wrote:
> Leif:
>   I review Readme.md. I think we can add the additional license for
>   SoftFloat-3e like other third party code. The change is as
>   below. Is it OK?
> 
> --- a/Readme.md
> +++ b/Readme.md
> @@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ contains the following components that are covered by additional licenses:
>  * [MdeModulePkg/Universal/RegularExpressionDxe/Oniguruma](MdeModulePkg/Universal/RegularExpressionDxe/Oniguruma/README)
>  * [OvmfPkg](OvmfPkg/License.txt)
>  * [CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl](CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl/LICENSE)
> +* [ArmPkg/Library/ArmSoftFloatLib/SoftFloat-3e](ArmPkg/Library/ArmSoftFloatLib/SoftFloat-3e/COPYING.txt)
> 
> Thanks
> Liming
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: devel at edk2.groups.io [mailto:devel at edk2.groups.io] On Behalf Of Leif Lindholm
> > Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2019 11:32 PM
> > To: devel at edk2.groups.io
> > Cc: Andrew Fish <afish at apple.com>; Laszlo Ersek <lersek at redhat.com>; Kinney, Michael D <michael.d.kinney at intel.com>; Ard
> > Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org>
> > Subject: [edk2-devel] contribution of code licensed other than bsd+patent
> > 
> > Hi stewards, and other interested people.
> > 
> > Readme.md lists a few licenses acceptable but not preferred (this text
> > used to live in Contributions.txt before the bsd+patent relicensing
> > effort). However, it does not explicitly state anything about the gap
> > that was left by the dropping of the TianoCore contribution agreement:
> > the explicit patent grant given by bsd+patent and TianoCore
> > contribution agreement.
> > 
> > As we have what I think is the first bit of code about to go in with a
> > non-bsd+patent license (the new ArmSoftFloat library), is this
> > something we need to worry about?
> > 
> > If nothing else, I think we should form an official opinion and add it
> > to Readme.md.
> > 
> > Best Regards,
> > 
> > Leif
> > 
> > 
> 

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