fabrice.bellard.free.fr— The KQEMU accelerator component of the open source QEMU emulation solution has been released under the GNU General Public License.
Feb 6, 2007View in Crawl 4
@BrainInAJar: no, GPL means it can be modified and ported with complete abandon. you could theoretically develop a ring-0 BSD port (though i'm not clear if the GPL allows modules to link with BSD kernels - i know the LGPL does) or even a Windows driver module based on this source. this is also an excellent first step toward getting this included in the standard Linux kernel.@rbanffy: i don't think you understand the significance of the differences in the BSD license and GPL. the GPL imposes a set of restrictions: source can be modified, but source changes must be distributed with binaries. no additional restrictions are allowed. the BSD license imposes an advertising restriction which is incompatible with the GPL and doesn't mandate redistribution of modified source.(i should clarify: redistribution of source is required only if a release is made based on modified source.)
From the QEMU site - "QEMU version 0.8.0 is out (Changelog). * Support for ARM Integrator/CP board system emulation. * Support for MIPS R4K system emulation. * Initial SMP support on x86 (up to 255 CPUs !). * Many new audio emulation features. * Initial USB support. * New networking options for VLAN support between several QEMU instances. "And that's just this release. It already has support for many platforms, it's just cleaner for x86 -> x86 as there isn't a need for as much emulation of the CPU
@BrainInAJar:You're right that the new GNU GPL won't permit Apple to include KQEMU with OSX. But like others already pointed out, this makes little difference to its proprietarity from last week.If Apple however wanted to, they could still negotiate with the author and get a different license (for cash). Also, there is still no reason for not porting KQEMU to OSX or its kernel. The GNU GPL might forbid "linking", but does only seriously bite when it comes to distributing it. (For your personal use, you may always "break" the licenses.)If Apple employees made an OSX port of the qemu module and made it available for download (somewhere else), this would be perfectly legit.I'm not so sure on Darwins license - APL would make it a little more difficult (one of the many licenses the GPL is incompatible to), but if it's just BSDL, the KQEMU module could even be included and distributed within. Apple had to adopt the GNU GPL only "pro-forma" then. It suffices to include the GNU LICENSE file in the tarball, the other 98% of the Darwin kernel would retain their license preamble anyhow. The Linux kernel for example contains a few snippets and files which just contain the BSD license statement.
greyfadeFeb 6, 2007
@BrainInAJar: no, GPL means it can be modified and ported with complete abandon. you could theoretically develop a ring-0 BSD port (though i'm not clear if the GPL allows modules to link with BSD kernels - i know the LGPL does) or even a Windows driver module based on this source. this is also an excellent first step toward getting this included in the standard Linux kernel.@rbanffy: i don't think you understand the significance of the differences in the BSD license and GPL. the GPL imposes a set of restrictions: source can be modified, but source changes must be distributed with binaries. no additional restrictions are allowed. the BSD license imposes an advertising restriction which is incompatible with the GPL and doesn't mandate redistribution of modified source.(i should clarify: redistribution of source is required only if a release is made based on modified source.)
jellygraphFeb 6, 2007
sweet!
bigtomrodneyFeb 6, 2007
From the QEMU site - "QEMU version 0.8.0 is out (Changelog). * Support for ARM Integrator/CP board system emulation. * Support for MIPS R4K system emulation. * Initial SMP support on x86 (up to 255 CPUs !). * Many new audio emulation features. * Initial USB support. * New networking options for VLAN support between several QEMU instances. "And that's just this release. It already has support for many platforms, it's just cleaner for x86 -> x86 as there isn't a need for as much emulation of the CPU
xmilkyFeb 7, 2007
@BrainInAJar:You're right that the new GNU GPL won't permit Apple to include KQEMU with OSX. But like others already pointed out, this makes little difference to its proprietarity from last week.If Apple however wanted to, they could still negotiate with the author and get a different license (for cash). Also, there is still no reason for not porting KQEMU to OSX or its kernel. The GNU GPL might forbid "linking", but does only seriously bite when it comes to distributing it. (For your personal use, you may always "break" the licenses.)If Apple employees made an OSX port of the qemu module and made it available for download (somewhere else), this would be perfectly legit.I'm not so sure on Darwins license - APL would make it a little more difficult (one of the many licenses the GPL is incompatible to), but if it's just BSDL, the KQEMU module could even be included and distributed within. Apple had to adopt the GNU GPL only "pro-forma" then. It suffices to include the GNU LICENSE file in the tarball, the other 98% of the Darwin kernel would retain their license preamble anyhow. The Linux kernel for example contains a few snippets and files which just contain the BSD license statement.
localhFeb 7, 2007
@Wootery:BSD doesn't include the advertising clause anymore.
wooteryFeb 7, 2007
@LocalHRight you are, my mistake.