Re: [Xen-devel] [Need Input] (informal) Automotive PV drivers subproject request

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxx>]

On 05/06/2014 13:47, Artem Mygaiev wrote:

QNX and other OSes
will have licenses that are required by corresponding regulations, some
may be not open nevertheless we tend to make all parts of the code
available to the Xen community.

Artem, Andrii: Just to clarify
* Can QNX drivers be built a) on Linux and b) without requiring to
purchase QNX
* Are there any issues with QNX driver headers : in other words, can
these be included under OSI approved licenses ?

I agree this is one interesting bit to know.

a) yes, there is a QNX Momentics IDE available for Linux
b) there is an "academic" free license and also 30-day evaluation

It is not clear to me whether this would work. So let me try and clarify through a few questions.

Question 1: Can the QNX drivers be built with free and open source software only (e.g. GCC)? If the answer is yes, that would solve most of the problem. If not, we need to look into other options (in a similar way as we needed to do this for http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Windows_PV_Drivers_Incubation_Project_Proposal - where Visual Studio is necessary for individuals to build and test and thus ultimately to contribute to the drivers)

Question 2: Can the QNX drivers be tested with free and open source software only or is some code under proprietary license necessary? And related we probably need some HW to test stuff on in future also?

IMHO being able to test the QNX drivers, should be a long-term goal of the subproject. To do this, the Xen Project may have to purchase a QNX license for a test machine and some HW. There are several ways to do this:
* Short term: A vendor could decide to test on behalf of the community. We have done this before. But it is not ideal in the long-run.
* Long term: We may need some funds from the AB (or a donation from a non-AB vendor) to enable this.
* Long term: it is conceivable that the Xen Project may be counted as "Non-Commercial Developers", in which case at least the software for future test infrastructure could be obtained for free for the Xen Project.

This does not have to be solved straight away and is IMHO not blocking the progress of this subproject proposal. Also, we have found a way to address this for http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Windows_PV_Drivers_Incubation_Project_Proposal

@Artem: Any guidance would be helpful

Note 3: As for a nice development environment such as an IDE: it is IMHO acceptable for an IDE to be available under a commercial license, as long as an FOSS alternative (e.g. GCC, GDB, ...) is available.

I did check http://www.qnx.org.uk/legal/licensing/non_commercial.html which seems to imply that there is a free license for "Non-Commercial Developers". The term seems "Non-Commercial Developers" to be tied to individuals not working for a commercial end-purpose, which is likely good enough. But I have not checked the detailed terms.

This document also seems to have some provision for open source projects ("non-commercial group projects") - although the terminology is not clear and not specific. So I am not sure whether we would count as a "non-commercial group project" and whether say a Linux Foundation Collaborative project would be able to get a development tools for a build and test service under the "Non-Commercial Developers" clause for free.

@Artem: Any guidance would be helpful

Question 4: I tripped over http://www.qnx.org.uk/legal/licensing/crm.html which raises some questions related to QNX licenses and what license we would host QNX drivers under. I believe - I will need to check this with the Linux Foundation - that as a Collaborative Project we can only host code under OSI approved licenses. So we would need to find a compatible OSI approved license for the QNX drivers. There also seems to be a note that some QNX software is available under Apache licenses (see http://www.qnx.org.uk/legal/licensing/open_source.html). I guess what this comes down to is whether QNX would allow us to make available a QNX BSP for Xen Project software under an OSI approved license (e.g. Apache 2.0). There is a statement in http://www.qnx.org.uk/legal/licensing/open_source.html which says "QSS [QNX Software Systems] has begun publishing QNX board support package (BSP) software under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (Apache 2.0). Members of the QNX developer community are encouraged to use their Momentics Tools to create BSPs to allow the QNX RTOS to run on a wider variety of hardware platforms [without stating that publication under Apache 2 is encouraged - but it sort of implies it]". This implies that maybe we are OK, but it needs checking.

@Artem, this is probably something you will need to follow up on and provide us with some more clarity. This would potentially be a blocking issue for the proposal.

Regards
Lars

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