Re: [Qemu-devel] why is kqemu closed?

[Leonardo E. Reiter]

No it's not!  In fact, in the latest version, he explicitly gives it a 
commercial ("Proprietary") license.  He also does not import any 
exported GPL symbols from the kernel.  In fact, if your claim is true, 
then the following very popular products violate the kernel license 
agreement:

VMware Workstation, GSX Server, ESX Server, Server Beta (free)
Parallels Workstation
NVIDIA drivers
Win4Lin 9x (shameless self-promotion, I admit)
Win4Lin Pro (which distributes KQEMU under license from Fabrice)

In fact, KQEMU uses almost no kernel functionality at all.  Allocating, 
freeing, and locking memory into place is not that interesting and is 
not something that Linux does alone - every OS in existence provides 
these services.  On Linux, you are not forced to be a GPL module to use 
them, because, they are simply not that interesting and are mandatory to 
run just about any type of application or driver.  The real meat of 
KQEMU is kernel-independent (the same binary runs on just about any OS, 
unmodified), and deals with the CPU directly.  It would be a crying 
shame if drivers like these would not be allowed in future kernels - 
they use the kernel as simply a loader, not to do anything really 
interesting.

I admit since I am a vendor, I have certain biases against forcing all 
software to be GPL.  However I respect these licenses fully, and also 
respect the author's choice to use whatever license he or she pleases, 
and also to allow exceptions to these licenses.  You might recall Linus 
Torvalds years ago explicitly giving an exception to "binding" when it 
came to loading kernel modules.  It would be hard to convince any vendor 
in the world to develop software for Linux if you were not allowed to 
run non-GPL applications on Linux.  Let's hope that never happens, 
although I understand that the latest sentiments seem to unfortunately 
be leaning that way.  This is not how Linux will beat Windows on the 
desktop, nor on the server!

Regards,

Leo Reiter

Auke Kok wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:20:54 +0200, "Hetz Ben Hamo" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Fabrice is the owner of the KQEMU code, and he decides for his own
> > reasons to put the code under closed source license.
>
>
> I'm sure that Fabrice knows and that I'm beating a dead horse, but this is 
> (strictly speaking, discussions pending ;^)) violating the linux kernel license 
> agreement.
>
> Auke
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel

--
Leonardo E. Reiter
Vice President of Product Development, CTO

Win4Lin, Inc.
Virtual Computing from Desktop to Data Center
Main: +1 512 339 7979
Fax: +1 512 532 6501
http://www.win4lin.com