Re: BTRFS and grub-extras legal position

[Chris Mason]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 06:27:33PM +0200, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko 
wrote:
> Hello, all. It seems that recently there are different rumors and
> misunderstandings about btrfs support. This mail is to make the things
> clear.
> 1) Technical work is done. I haven't reviewed any patches to avoid being
> tainted.
> 2) Every patch submitted till now uses Oracle's copyrighted work
> released only under GPLv2 which is incompatible with GRUB
> 3) license incompatible works aren't ok for either grub or grub-extras. Why?
> There are 3 kind of works:
> a) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed. Protected.
>    A code for which copyright assignment was signed and which if
> improperly used can be protected by FSF.
> b) Freely redistribuable. Guaranteed.
>    A code for which copyright disclaimers were signed which makes for
> copyright holder impossible to sue users.
> c) Freely redistribuable.
>    No disclaimers were signed but the will of author to release to
> public usage was sufficiently clear.
> d) Not redistribuable
>    Distribution of such code will be a plain copyright infrigement
> 
> For GNU GRUB code under a and b is ok. Occasionaly code of type c is
> permitted on case-by-case basis (e.g. lzma).
> grub-extras has a less strict copyright policy. For grub-extras code
> under a, b and c is ok. In practice it holds only code under c since
> code under a and b is in GRUB proper.
> Code under d isn't ok for either project. Neither GNU GRUB nor
> grub-extras is a place for "warez".

The btrfs grub2 patches were submitted with annotations for where the
code came from.  I need to verify each of the annotations fits oracle
copyrighted code, and where required get permission to license under
gplv2 or later.

I really want to do this and appreciate the time grub2 developers have
spent on btrfs.  I'll get it done.

-chris