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

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

Hi Nick,

On Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 09:03:11AM +1000, Nicholas Nethercote wrote:
> I don't agree with the license update. At least, not without more
> discussion.

Sure. Lets discuss some more. Sorry for assuming we already got
consensus. I do think it is a good idea. But would not want to push
this through if there are core developers objecting.

> The motivation seemed to be about replacing Valgrind's disassembly code
> with some third-party code. Which sounds like an enormously large and
> invasive change.

The direct motivation was indeed Florian wanting to reuse binutils
objdump code to support the many extended mnemonics for s390 vector
insns. I believe he already has a working patch for that, so maybe he
could post that so you can see if it is a sane approach.

But having worked on the valgrind gdbserver and vgdb gdb integration
stuff which is derived from gdb gdbserver code when it was still
GPLv2+ I have also thought it would be really nice to upgrade that
(current GDB is also GPLv3+).

There are also bits and pieces in coregrind/m_debuginfo/readelf.c
taken from older binutils code (not sure if that can be easily
upgraded now though).

In general it would be nice if we can again take some existing code
from binutils and/or gdb to incorporate. And GPLv3 also has the
benefit of being a slightly nicer license (imho) that is easier to
comply with and is compatible with more other licenses (specifically
the Apache license, although I have no examples of Apache licensed
code that we might want to incorporate at this time).

> And the license discussion hasn't gotten any deeper than "that might be
> nice". License changes are serious, they should be taken seriously.

I think it has been a bit deeper than that with some concrete examples
of what benefits it brings. But yes, it is serious and it also is
actual work to do it correctly (which is why I will ask FSF legal to
help to get all the details right). I wouldn't want to do it if I
didn't think the benefits aren't worth it, or if other core developers
are against it.

Cheers,

Mark

> On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 at 02:53, Mark Wielaard <ma...@kl...> wrote:
> 
> > 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
> >
> >
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