[Valgrind-developers] Switching to GPLv3+ for next release (Was: Using objdump code for disassembly)

[Mark W. <ma...@kl...>]

Hi all,

Updating the subject to be explicit about the goal.

On Thu, 2025-06-12 at 15:21 +0200, Andreas Arnez wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 02 2025, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > On Sun, 2025-06-01 at 17:47 +0200, Paul Floyd wrote:
> > > On 6/1/25 15:22, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > > > I think an upgrade to GPLv3+ for valgrind is a good idea. It would
> > > > also allow us to upgrade some gdbserver parts (various files under
> > > > coregrind/m_gdbserver). Note that the new vgstack utility is already
> > > > derived from GPLv3+ code.
> > > > 
> > > > We could make that a goal for 3.26.0 (or maybe that deserves finally
> > > > going to 4.0?) for our October release. I can contact the FSF legal
> > > > team to ask if they want to help with or see any issues with such an
> > > > upgrade if we want to incorporate more GPLv3+ code from the core
> > > > toolchain projects.
> > > 
> > > Licence-wise, I don't have much of an opinion. It would be nice to be 
> > > able to integrate code more easily.
> > > 
> > > There are two kinds of projects that might get impacted. Third-party 
> > > ports, I guess they will just accept moving to GPL3+.
> > 
> > Yes. Or they keep on 3.25.x. But I hope the long term goal of any
> > third-party port would be to eventually get included upstream. Although
> > I admit we have at times been really slow incorporating new ports.
> > 
> > >  Then there is VEX. 
> > > The main project that I know of is PyVEX https://github.com/angr/pyvex 
> > > which seems to be under a BSD licence. That looks wrong to me to start with.
> > 
> > I think that is not deliberately wrong, just slightly confused. They
> > should probably mention top-level that they are (re)distributing
> > various parts under the GPL (see e.g. the pyvex_c and vex subdirs,
> > which properly carry GPL notices). Which means the project as a whole
> > also is distributed GPL, even if parts of the source code could also be
> > reused under the BSD license as long as it isn't derived from the GPL
> > parts.
> 
> Sounds like everyone is OK with this in principle, right?
> 
> FWIW, I'd like that too.  For s390x it would certainly simplify things
> quite a bit.

Yes, it sounds like we have concensus. I'll contact the FSF legal team
to ask if they have any comments/advise and then update the headers
based on their feedback.

Thanks,

Mark