Re: [edk2-devel] [PATCH v3 00/13] OvmfPkg: Support booting from Fusion-MPT SCSI controllers

["Laszlo Ersek" <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 03/04/20 20:22, Nikita Leshenko wrote:
> This series adds driver support for:
> - LSI53C1030
> - SAS1068
> - SAS1068E
>
> These controllers are widely supported by QEMU, VirtualBox and VMWare.
> This work is part of the more general agenda of enhancing OVMF boot
> device support to have feature parity with SeaBIOS.
>
> We have also developed support for PVSCSI which we will submit in a
> separate patch series.
>
> I pushed a copy of these patches to
> https://github.com/nikital/edk2/tree/mptscsi_v3
>
> Note that I didn't address Laszlo's comment on v2 about BSD vs
> BSD+patent licensing, it needs some internal discussion. I would still
> like move forward with the review so I'm submitting v3 with the old
> license for now.

Sorry, this doesn't work for me.

You seem to have removed the old "Contributed-under: TianoCore
Contribution Agreement 1.1" lines from the commit messages, and that's
great.

(My understanding is that those lines are now deal-breakers, because
said "Contribution Agreement" is no longer in effect, or even described
in the project, except in the "License-History.txt" file.)

What does not work for me is reviewing a patch set that the submitter
*knows* is unmergeable. I absolutely don't have time for that. Please
submit a patch set that you honestly believe can be merged as-is.

To be clear, the 2-Clause BSD License (SPDX short identifier:
BSD-2-Clause) *is* acceptable, according to "Readme.md"; and I'm not
trying to force you to contribute under "SPDX-License-Identifier:
BSD-2-Clause-Patent".

However, I explained at [1] that "Readme.md" contains the following
passage:

> The majority of the content in the EDK II open source project uses a
> [BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent License](License.txt).  The EDK II open source project
> contains the following components that are covered by additional licenses:
> * [...]
> * [OvmfPkg](OvmfPkg/License.txt)
> * [...]

and I asked that you please extend "OvmfPkg/License.txt", should you
prefer to make this contribution under "BSD-2-Clause".

[1] http://mid.mail-archive.com/a202d92e-61e1-187b-be47-e60ad282c575@redhat.com
    https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/55049

This (v3) posting is under "BSD-2-Clause" (which is fine), but the
cumulative diffstat does not mention "OvmfPkg/License.txt", against my
express request. Similarly counter to my express request, you have not
adopted the SPDX notation even for "BSD-2-Clause".

I think you may have thought that we could make progress on the
technical details while you figured out your preferred license, and in
the end, you'd *unconditionally* repost the series (even if it were
technically perfect at v3), with one of the following modifications:

- you'd stick with "BSD-2-Clause", and extend "OvmfPkg/License.txt",

- or else you'd switch to "BSD-2-Clause-Patent".

To be clear, this approach does not work for me. I don't have time for
spurious reviews. When you post v(n+1) of the series, I have to:

- fetch that from your repo and/or apply it from the list,

- pull up my review notes that I had given for v(n),

- compare every single patch in the v(n+1) series against the v(n)
  counterpart, and verify that your changes are in sync with my requests
  -- even if my only feedback for v(n) was a "Reviewed-by",

- and generally page-in the whole topic against a "cold cache", possibly
  from a distance of a week or more.

I can't do this *spuriously*. The bottleneck is at the review side, not
at the contribution side.

Of course, people do sometimes post RFC patches (marked as such). That's
a great tool to discuss prototypes and new ideas. I give RFC series a
*fraction* of the attention that I give to real PATCH series. I might
ignore RFCs completely.

Please post v4 with either the license flipped to "BSD-2-Clause-Patent",
or with "OvmfPkg/License.txt" modified. If you need time to decide,
please post v4 when you have decided.

Per <https://bugzilla.tianocore.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2390>:

- Your v1 posting was in January 2019,

- you announced starting work on v2 in November 2019,

- you posted v2 in February 2020.

In response to every one of the v1 through v3 postings, I followed up in
at most 3 days, as much as I can tell. I think we can now wait for a
week or two until your Legal Department figures out the license under
which they would like you to make this contribution.

Thanks,
Laszlo