
UC Berkeley's Lawyers Blocking RISC-V in GCC - mynameislegion
https://groups.google.com/a/groups.riscv.org/d/topic/sw-dev/Kb0f6ETkR0Y
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rwmj
This is annoying because it's one of several things that stops Fedora/RISC-V
from going into Fedora proper, but I'm sure it'll be sorted out.

Edit: To save anyone asking, here are the other things we're waiting on:

* Upstreaming of glibc, kernel and binutils changes.

* Availability of rackable server hardware - required so we can deploy builders in the Fedora datacenter. This is obviously the biggest blocker, and likely several years away. In the interim I'm running my own build server which is currently doing a mass rebuild, but once that is finished will pick packages from the Fedora primary architecture builders and rebuild them for riscv64 ([https://fedorapeople.org/groups/risc-v/](https://fedorapeople.org/groups/risc-v/))

* Upstreaming of qemu changes (happening at the moment). Not a requirement, but nice to have.

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tbirdz
Is having physical RISC-V hardware required, or would using an fpga-based
risc-v cpu or a risc-v emulator be acceptable?

~~~
mynameislegion
The qemu support for RISC-V is being upstreamed right now and there is also
the Spike RISC-V simulator that you can use. There are various soft CPUs that
can be run in FPGAs too.

~~~
hedora
I'm looking for a performant way to run RISC-V code in the next year or so.
Any idea how sophisticated the QEMU emualtor is? For instance, is it JITing to
X86, or interpreting? Is there low hanging fruit there on the CPU performance
side?

On a related note, is throwing money at the FPGA vendors going to change the
tradeoff, or is QEMU already winning against top-end hardware?

~~~
rwmj
QEMU JITs the code and is very performant, much faster than any FPGAs. The two
lowest hanging fruit now are:

\- Multithreaded TCG would let us use multiple host cores (eg allowing
parallel builds). MT-TCG is a very new feature even in QEMU.

\- Adding virtio 1.0 support would allow us to use much more efficient block
devices.

qemu-user exists already and avoids both these issues, however we cannot use
it for final builds because of concerns over incorrect building when the
kernel isn't a RISC-V kernel. For preliminary test-building it is fine, and
very fast on Intel Xeon host hardware.

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asb
I discussed this issue with a GCC developer at the LLVM Cauldron in Hebden
Bridge a few weeks ago. He pointed out that although it's understandable the
UC Berkeley regents balk at the idea of exclusive copyright assignment, the
terms of the assignment do allow you to receive non-exclusive rights back with
a 90 day notice period. Why it's structured in that way I'm not sure. I would
hope there's a legal reason relating to the FSF's ability to fight copyright
infringement, rather than a simple desire to discourage dual licensing.

~~~
davexunit
Copyright assignment is done so that FSF has the standing to sue for GPL
violations.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Copyright assignment is done so that FSF has the standing to sue for GPL
> violations.

Were they are a licensee authorized to make and redistribute a derivative
work, they would have standing to sue for violations of the copyright on the
derivative. Copyright assignment is not necessary for the FSF to have standing
to sue for violations of the copyright on GCC when it incorporates the UCB-
owned code.

Copyright assignment does, however, prevent UCB from having standing to sue
for violations -- and I think making the FSF's standing _exclusive_ is exactly
the point.

~~~
bonzini
> Copyright assignment is not necessary for the FSF to have standing to sue
> for violations of the copyright on GCC when it incorporates the UCB-owned
> code.

No, but copyright assignment is necessary for the FSF to have standing to sue
on UCB-owned code (not just on derivatives), without any approval or
collaboration from UCB and bypassing any discussion (whether in court or
outside) on "how much" of the code the FSF owns. Making FSF's standing
exclusive is not the point; making FSF autonomous is.

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CalChris
I went to Berkeley and I still drop by to sit in on lectures.

The IP department has always been terrible to deal with. They really are the
opposite of Stanford with regards to IP. A pain to deal with, everything up
front. Very hostile to startups. This probably puts SiFive in limbo.

They (the IP dept) lost a first rate EE prof (Howe) over nonsense like this.
Their glory days of the BSD lawsuit are long over.

~~~
imglorp
I wonder if there's statistics somewhere listing schools vs how many tech
spinoffs they've created, and where the various tech schools rank on that.

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ucaetano
Shouldn't the title be "FSF blocking RISC-V in GGC unless UC Berkeley hands
over copyright"?

~~~
cwyers
Right. UC Berkeley is following the letter and the spirit of the GPL here.

~~~
ucaetano
Actually, it is, GPL doesn't in anyway imply mandatory handover of copyrights
to a 3rd party.

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phkahler
Isn't that code derived from GPLed code? In that case it must have a GPL
license, so what are the lawyers really hung up on with copyright assignment?
It's not like they can change the license due to owning the copyright, and
they can't prevent anyone else using the code they've already released under
that license. I guess I can see the frustration - at this point the actual
ownership is kind of a minor point.

~~~
legulere
Yes the code is under GPL. The FSF wants copyright assigned to it, because
that allows them to sue people that infringe the GPL [1]. This assignment is
the precondition for the code to get included into GCC, but which the lawyers
at Berkley don't seem to be so fond of.

Owning the copyright also allows you to dual license the code under different
licenses. That's not really the issue here with the FSF, but it's one of the
many good reasons not to assign copyright to other entities.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-
assign.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> The FSF wants copyright assigned to it, because that allows them to sue
> people that infringe the GPL

But that's not at all true: they can sue people that violate the copyright on
the derivative work incorporating the UCB-owned code (or code derived from it
in the future) if they are properly licensed to create a distribute derivative
works, which have their own copyright.

Assignment just means UCB loses the right to sue over violations of the
copyright, and the FSF's right to sue becomes exclusive -- which also gives
FSF stronger negotiating power in settling lawsuits, since otherwise settling
with the FSF would potentially leave others with legal claims.

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wodencafe
Imagine all the good we developers and artists could do, if there weren't so
many goddamn lawyers in the way.

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pawadu
How much work are we talking about here? Is it possible to do a clean-room
implementation with reasonable effort?

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dredmorbius
Might a fix be to lobby the California state legislature to assign copyright
through statute?

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alrs
Dear Regents of the University of California:

Could you guys someday learn to get out of your own way?

~~~
blackguardx
Well, I think most organizations would be uncomfortable handing over their IP
rights to third parties. Didn't the FSF make an exception to this rule for
another developer?

Also, why can't they use Clang/LLVM? That uses the BSD license as far as I
know.

~~~
jsprogrammer
UC does not really have IP rights under the CA Constitution. At least, not any
right that prevents a person from speaking freely.

UC cannot enforce copyright, NDAs, or other restrictions of speech. I think
there is a very good argument that UC is unable to enforce (or even hold) a
patent.

> Article 1, Section 2 (a). Sentence 2
> [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_1](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_1)

~~~
dragonwriter
> UC does not really have IP rights under the CA Constitution.

Yes, it does. IP is a subset of personal property (more specifically, a subset
of intangible personal property) and the Regents of the University of
California have the "power to take and hold, either by purchase or by
donation, or gift, testamentary or otherwise, or in any other manner, without
restriction, all real and personal property for the benefit of the university
or incidentally to its conduct". Art. IX, Sec. 9(f). [0]

[0]
[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_9](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_9)

~~~
jsprogrammer
UC cannot restrict speech, so the fact that something is its property is
merely the formality of the public's ownership.

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mankash666
Port to clang. Lawyer friendly and practical license

