[Buildroot] Report from the Buildroot Developer Day

[Michael S. Zick]

On Fri November 4 2011, Luca Ceresoli wrote:
> Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> > Buildroot Developer Day - ELCE 2011
> > ===================================
> 
> Thomas, thanks a lot for your detailed and timely report!
> 
> > Licensing report generation
> > ---------------------------
> 
> ...
> > It is also not clear yet what the output of this report should be. On
> > one side, Thomas Petazzoni proposed that it generates an HTML document
> > inside a directory with all the tarballs and all the patches for the
> > different components. On the other side, Peter Korsgaard proposed that
> > a report be generated, but only with a list of tarballs, leaving the
> > user the work of putting the tarballs together. For Peter, there is no
> 
> I can't see any drawback of having Buildroot put together the tarballs.
> It's boring for a man, and I suppose it would be easy to implement in
> Buildroot.
> 
> > need to worry about the patches, since releasing Buildroot as a whole
> > is sufficient to provide all the patches. Thomas, however, wasn't sure
> > if releasing the Buildroot environment itself was acceptable for all
> > Buildroot users as the Buildroot configuration gives quite some
> > details on the system configuration. This remains to be discussed.
> 
> I think this would be illegal, at least according to the GPLv2:
> 
>    "For an executable work, complete source code means all the source
>    code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
>    definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and
>    installation of the executable."
>

My favorite quote from the GPLv2 -
 
> My understanding is that Buildroot is exactly "the scripts used to
> control compilation and installation", so the patches that exist in
> Buildroot should be released as well.
> 

Which says nothing at all about the values assigned to any script
variables; I.E: The .config file contents.

__Unless__ the "associated interface definition files" is stretched
in its common meaning (for example, header files) to include the
interface between the build system and the user (.config settings).

I do not build software for others, so I have never had to make a
decision on the above (or hire a legal decision).

But I have seen enough "complete" source code releases to know that
Thomas is not alone in considering the setting of the content values 
in the .config files to be proprietary.

Mike
> Luca
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