Investigate (mostly GPLv2) packages dropped in YP 2.3 (Pyro)

Initial work in the BIT on using YP 2.3 (Pyro) for the Genivi 13 (Orion) Baseline showed that YP 2.3 dropped support for non-GPLv3 versions of the following packages :

• gdbm
• tremor (see comments for why this is deleted)
• m4
• elfutils
• coreutils
• readline
• gettext
• gawk
• bash

In earlier versions of the YP when the upstream programs moved to a GPLv3 license, YP provided recipes for both the newer version and an earlier non-GPLv3 version. In YP 2.3 these were dropped and the recipes moved to a new meta-gplv2 layer with less support.

In the short term we can use the recipes in meta-gplv2 to provide a non-GPLv3 baseline, but this is not a good solution for the longer term due to the lack of security updates and fixes. These packages are therefore part of the GPLv3 discussion.

Possible solutions

Section 6.11.7 of the YP 2.3 Reference Manual which deals with this change has the following note:

The long-term solution might be to move to BSD-licensed replacements of the GPLv3 components for those that need to exclude GPLv3-licensed components from the target system. This solution will be investigated for future Yocto Project releases.

One clear approach therefore would be for companies requiring this feature to pool resource upstream in that effort.