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Re: Updating Genode's license to AGPLv3 + open-source linking clause
by Nobody III 19 Dec '16

19 Dec '16

I'm thinking of the possibility of Genode becoming a consumer OS platform. One benefit of Genode is that a user doesn't need to trust every single program running on his computer. If I have to run a piece of proprietary software, Genode would be my preferred platform. Also, for software that I don't have to trust, I don't care as much whether it's proprietary. I would prefer that Adobe and Autodesk port their software to Genode, especially since 3D software doesn't work well in VirtualBox. I prefer free software because it's more trustworthy, but I still use some proprietary software (e.g. Google Chrome with Flash Player). On Dec 17, 2016 8:38 AM, "Norman Feske" <norman.feske@...1...> wrote: Hello Ben, > Am I correct that software that doesn't link directly to any AGPLv3 code > (e.g. code that just uses libc) is okay to have proprietary licenses? this is not correct because the proprietary code would still linked to Genode in addition to the libc. > That seems to be the logical interpretation, and probably the most > beneficial, as it wouldn't discourage companies from porting their > software to Genode. This statement is interesting because it raises the question of the motives and goals behind Genode. What does "most beneficial" mean? Beneficial to whom? Let me try to look at this question from different perspectives. 1. The Free Software user For an end user who consciously uses a Free Software ecosystem, proprietary applications are not interesting because they restrict the freedom of the user. Frankly speaking, I am an example of such a user. I have not touched proprietary applications on my computer since several years. But I vividly remember the inconvenience of using opaque installers, the lack of security updates, the inability to fix bugs, or the suspicion about backdoors and vulnerabilities introduced by such applications. The argument that an operating system would be useless without proprietary applications was probably valid 15 years ago. Today, the Free Software world is so strong and diverse that this argument does not hold anymore. 2. The consumer Many end users are neither aware nor interested in technical details. They just want to get work done, browse the web, play games, or watch movies. From the operating-system's perspective, I also see professionals (like photographers, writers, business users) in this category. A typical consumer uses the OS that comes pre-installed on the device, and accepts the inherent dependency from commercial vendors. The user does not care too much about the uppercase Freedom of software. I am sometimes such a user. E.g., when using my portable audio player, I just want to listen to music. 3. The proprietary application vendor For a proprietary application vendor, the consumer (2) is a business case. The application vendor wants to create and distribute applications with as little costs as possible and sell them to the consumer at the highest price possible. The latter would not be easily possible if the application vendor published its own "intellectual property" to everyone for free. Hence, the applications tend to stay proprietary to uphold the business case. The application vendor has to consider expenses like paid-for development tools, licenses of commercial libraries, or app-store fees as cost factors. It is clear that proprietary application vendors welcome liberally licensed open-source libraries or platforms for hosting and distributing proprietary software at no costs. 4. The proprietary platform vendor A vendor may use Genode as the basis of a proprietary platform, for example an appliance designated for a specific market. But such a platform may in principle also be targeted at the consumer mass market. In order to use Genode as the basis of a proprietary platform, the platform vendor obtains a commercial license of Genode. In this case, the choice of Genode's regular open-source license is not a concern for such a platform vendor. 5. The Free Software developer The motives of Free-Software developers are diverse. But regardless of the motives, they generally improve the lives of Free-Software users. If the software addresses consumer needs, Free-Software developers often find themselves as competing with proprietary applications. Of course, the categories are not clear-cut. But they help to address two questions: (1) Who would benefit from the ability to host proprietary applications on top of the open-source Genode system, and (2) whom do we want to cater with the open-source license of Genode? Regarding question (1), only the proprietary application vendor would immediately benefit, but only under the condition that Genode is a platform used by their target audience (consumers). This is of course not the case. Hence, for an application vendor, there is no business case for porting their applications to Genode at all. Instead, application vendors focus on popular end-user platforms like iOS, Android, Windows. Regarding question (2), with Genode's open-source license, we want to cater Free-Software users and Free-Software developers in the first place. Acknowledging that the open-source Genode system is not a consumer platform as is, there is no benefit in catering the interests of proprietary application vendors with Genode's open-source license. Please don't get me wrong. I don't dismiss consumers. I see two principle ways of how Genode can reach popularity among consumers, by becoming a consumer platform, or by consumers gravitating towards Free Software. Regarding the former, I am convinced that Genode can become a popular consumer platform only with strong commercial incentives of a platform vendor. Should a platform vendor develop such an interest, it would seek a commercial license. The funding obtained from the commercial licensing would ultimately help Genode and thereby the Free-Software community. The second direction is that consumers would buy products that are solely based on Free Software. Personally, as a Free-Software user, I find this prospect quite exciting. Given this line of thinking, I hope that you agree that the ability to host proprietary applications on top of the open-source Genode system would not bring any tangible value. But maybe I have overlooked something? Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts. Regards Norman -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ genode-main mailing list genode-main(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/genode-main

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Updating Genode's license to AGPLv3 + open-source linking clause
by Norman Feske 18 Dec '16

18 Dec '16

Dear community, with the upcoming release 17.02, we are planning to change Genode's open-source license. The current GPLv2 license ------------------------- The Genode OS Framework is currently licensed under the terms of the version 2 of the GNU General Public License. We originally picked this license in 2008 for the following reasons: * It captures the spirit of Free Software, which we deeply share with the FSF. The license ultimately empowers the authors and the end users of software. Genode would not exist without Free Software. It is built on the shoulders of software like GCC, the GNU system, or Linux. All software that we at Genode Labs develop is Free Software. * At the time of the first Genode release, the GPLv2 was a time-tested and widely used license. * It enables the dual-licensing business model of Genode Labs. If Genode is commercially leveraged for proprietary solutions, Genode Labs benefits from the success of such products. This way, Genode has a long-term strategy to fund its development without relying on donations, public funding, or venture capital. We value this independence as fundamental for the sustainability of our project. * Adopting the same license as Linux made a lot of sense because we are routinely reusing Linux driver code inside Genode components. Affero General Public License ----------------------------- The time did not stand still. The GPLv3 became widely spread and well-understood. It rectifies several shortcomings of the GPLv2. Furthermore, the Affero General Public License [1] closes loopholes of the GPL license with respect to web applications. Unlike 2008 when most applications were programs executed directly on the end user's computer, web applications have become predominant by now. For Genode, we ignored the deficiencies of the GPLv2 for a long time. At the same time, with more and more software being added to our "ports" - the library of 3rd-party software ported to Genode - the license compatibility question, which we tried to avoid for Linux kernel code, arises for other 3rd-party software that is combined with Genode. Admittedly, one reason for our hesitance was our fear of long-winded and opinion-loaded discussions around the licensing topic. But we ultimately have to acknowledge that an update to a modern license and a clarification of our stance with respect to the interoperability of Genode with other Open-Source software is long overdue. The AGPLv3 encapsulates exactly the spirit, which originally attracted us to the GPL. After careful review, it makes perfect sense to use it for Genode. The following Wikipedia article nicely explains the rationale behind this license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License Addressing interoperability concerns ------------------------------------ Unlike most end-user software, which falls into a tangible category (application, library, kernel), Genode plays a special role. Not just because it is an operating system. But it is very unconventional at that: It is a collection of programs (Genode components). It is also a set of application libraries. It is also a "system library". It also comprises a dynamic linker. It may also be the kernel (i.e., our base-hw kernel). The lines between the categories become blurry. For this reason, we intend to add a linking clause to Genode's version of the AGPL license text, similar to the classpath linking exception but restricted to software licenses that are blessed by the Open-Source Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, or Genode Labs. Inspired from the text of the classpath linking exception, our clause would look as follows: Linking Genode code statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on Genode. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3) cover the whole combination. As an "additional permission" as defined by Section 7 of the AGPLv3, Genode Labs as the copyright holder of Genode gives you permission to link Genode source code with "independent modules" to produce an executable if the independent modules are licensed under an "approved license", and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An "approved license" is a license that is officially approved as an Open-Source license by the Open Source Initiative [1], or listed as a Free-Software license by the Free Software Foundation [2], or explicitly approved by Genode Labs. An "independent module" is a module which is not derived from or based on Genode. If you modify Genode, you may extend this exception to your version of Genode, but you are not obliged to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. [1] https://opensource.org/licenses [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html With this clause in place, we want to express our consent to use Genode in combination with other open-source software. Note, however, that - unlike the classpath exception clause, our clause excludes the combination of Genode with proprietary software. This is our deliberate decision. With Genode becoming AGPLv3, we face the question of how to integrate 3rd-party code (like GPLv2-licensed Linux device drivers) in a Genode component. To address this concern, Genode-specific glue code that is needed to integrate the 3rd-party code with the Genode API ("system library") will have a license that is compatible with both the license of the 3rd-party code and Genode's AGPLv3 as such glue code is a derivative of both Genode and the incorporated code, e.g., the MIT license. In line with the wording of the exception clause above, when distributing binaries of such components, the licenses of both Genode and the incorporated 3rd-party code must be respected. I hope that you support our plan to relicense Genode to AGPLv3 along with our linking exception clause. Should you have doubts about us taking this direction, please let me know. Best regards Norman -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth

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Listing a directory using the file system session
by Martijn Verschoor 16 Dec '16

16 Dec '16

Dear Genode community, I’m looking for a way to list the files (nodes) in a directory using a file system session. Amongst other, I studied the File_system::Session and file_system/utils.h but cannot find a hook to get started. I see that reading the directory nodes is supported -> this returns the Directory_entry struct with information about the directory itself, but not about the nodes the directory contains (right?). Is there a way retrieve the latter? Any help is appreciated! Met vriendelijke groet / kind regards, Martijn Verschoor Cyber Security Labs B.V. | Gooimeer 6-31 | 1411 DD Naarden | The Netherlands +31 35 631 3253 (office) | +31 616 014 087 (mobile)

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Yet another question
by Florian Grätz 15 Dec '16

15 Dec '16

Hello, community, first of all: let me express, how helpful and responsive this mailing list is. I finally succeeded in running make for hw_rpi - still I have no idea how to run it on my real hardware. make surely created many files, most of them object files (.o), or object archives (.a). For running on my hardware, I would need an image file, which I can write on an SD card, though. How would I create one? Browsing through the .txt files didn't yield to anything useful. I also have another concern when making for target linux_x86 according to section 'Quick start to build genode for linux'. make run/demo quits with the following errors: /usr/bin/ld: fb_sdl.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 agains symbol '_ZTIN6Genode11Msgbuf_base13_Too_many_capsE' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC /usr/bin/ld: input.o: relocation R_X86_64_32S agains '.rodata' can not be used when making a shared object recompile with -fPIC /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/6../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o: relocation R_X86_64_32S against symbol '__libc_csu_fini' can not be used when making shared object; recompile with -fPIC /usr/bin/ld: final link failed: Bad value collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status /home/florian/genode/repos/base/mk/prg.mk:222: recipe for target 'fb_sdl' failed If I run make without any arguments, the adio_drv doesn't build. The linker quits with the following messages: /usr/bin/ld: alsa.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 agains '.bss' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/6../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o: relocation R_X86_64_32S against symbol '__libc_csu_fini' can not be used when making shared object; recompile with -fPIC /usr/bin/ld: final link failed: Nonrepresentable section on output collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status /home/florian/genode/repos/base/mk/prg.mk:222: recipe for target 'audio_drv' failed Any hints would be greatly appreciated. All the best, Florian.

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(home) recording studio - low latency audio & hardware
by Krefft, Daniel 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

Hi, I want to build my own audio recording system (mostly standard components). Genode seems a great and highly customizable alternative to blown up operating systems <insert one of the three main os here> with some extra packages. Also, it offers a low latency audio support on-top of alsa (good starting point). So, the following random questions came into my mind: 1) Is the turmvilla scenario a good starting point? 2) What about the support for firewire-devices (e.g. audio interfaces)? 3) Does the e.g. Linux-kernel need to be patched to get lower latency? 4) Which PC architecture is supported (x86 & x86_64)? 5) What is the current state of the display-driver? The general setup should be similar to this: PC: Haswell CPU (i5, 2.6 GHz), 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Mini ITX Formfactor Equipment: Firewire Audio Interface Software: Linux-Kernel or base-hw, ALSA, FFADO, JACK?, Ardour4, ... Thank you in advance. Best regards Daniel -- Daniel Krefft MSc. Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Technische Universitaet Muenchen Fakultaet fuer Informatik Lehrstuhl fuer Betriebssysteme Arcisstrasse 21 80333 Muenchen Tel. +49 89 289 18791 daniel.krefft@...256... www.os.in.tum.de/personen/krefft

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16.11 build fails on boot image creation
by unknown＠example.com 09 Dec '16

09 Dec '16

Hi, I'm moving from 16.08 to 16.11. I had previously built and run my custom os and apps successfully on releases since 14.xx. The kernel is base-hw and the platform is based on TI's AM437x. Using the same make script that I used in 16.08, the script successfully built all the components on 16.11 without error. However, in the last stage, to build the boot image, it first failed with the error "unknown platform no linker address known". I traced this to a new tool module, tool/run/boot_dir/hw. Apparently this script requires that each unique base-hw kernel platform have a table entry that contains the name used for the platform plus an address which I assume is the load address for the boot image. Is there a documentation update describing this new feature in a bit more detail than the paragraph in the release notes? Adding to the table the necessary entry and running the make script again produced another error which has me stuck. The full make output is attached but the error that is now occurring complains that modules have been built for hardware floating point but the libgcc.a is not built to using the vector floating point register arguments. The message output for one of the libgcc.a modules is: /opt/usr-local/genode-gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/4.9.2/../../../../arm-none-eabi/bin/ld: error: var/run/rico_fs.core uses VFP register arguments, /opt/usr-local/genode-gcc/bin/../lib/gcc/arm-none-eabi/4.9.2/libgcc.a(_fixsfdi.o) does not Since release 15.02 I've been compiling some of the modules with floating point hardware flagged on, so rico_fs.core does indeed have VFP register usage in it. So why is this error showing up now and not in prior releases and how may I fix it? Thanks, Bob Stewart Get Outlook for Android

2 5

Including debugging information in binaries
by Christoph Schmied 09 Dec '16

09 Dec '16

2 1

Inheriting from Mmio class
by Johannes Schlatow 09 Dec '16

09 Dec '16

Hi, I really like Genode's Register API as it makes accessing memory mapped hardware registers quite clean and simple. However, I recently encountered the need to access a rather complex I2C slave device. The I2C controller itself is accessible via MMIO. Yet, the slave device itself has a notion of registers. Basically, you first send the register address to the I2C slave and, in a second transaction, you can read/write the register's value. Being used to the clean appearance of MMIO in Genode, I was wondering whether the access to I2C slave registers could be wrapped in a similar way. My intuition is that it might simply suffice to inherit from the Mmio class and modify the write<>() and read<>() functions but haven't checked the code in detail. Any suggestions/ideas? Cheers Johannes

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Intel WiFi cards and driver support
by Johannes Schlatow 08 Dec '16

08 Dec '16

Hi all, I got new toy, a Thinkpad x220, to play with the Turmvilla scenario. Unfortunately, it only came with a single-band wifi card (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000). I'm therefore thinking about replacing it with one of the compatible dual-band cards. I'd like to ask if anyone has experience with using the wifi driver for any of these candidates: - Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 Cheers Johannes

2 1

Including debugging info in binaries
by Christoph Schmied 07 Dec '16

07 Dec '16

Hey, I am using Genode to build a project based upon base-hw. I now want to include debugging information in the final binary. It seems the debugging information is available in the intermediate binaries, but not in the final one since it is stripped. How can I stop the Genode toolchain from throwing away the debugging information? Greetings, Christoph

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