bundle QEMU installer with HAXM accelerator for Windows

[Patrick Schleizer]

As you probably know HAXM is an accelerator for Windows.

https://www.qemu.org/2017/11/22/haxm-usage-windows/

Currently it is required to first install QEMU and then install HAXM.

For a better out of the box user experience on the Windows platform it would be nice if QEMU and HAXM would be installed by the same installer.

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé (philmd)]

Apparently HAXM uses the BSD 3-Clause License with the 3rd clause that "prohibits others from using the name of the project or its contributors to promote derived products without written consent."

[Patrick Schleizer (adrelanos)]

I think licensing is a non-issue.

That is probably a quote from the github license summary at https://github.com/intel/haxm/blob/master/LICENSE

> A permissive license similar to the BSD 2-Clause License, but with a 3rd clause that prohibits others from using the name of the project or its contributors to promote derived products without written consent.

I would ignore whatever github says "This is not legal advice. Learn more about repository licenses." Their summary might have good intentions but cause confusion. Only github mentions "project". The actual license text does not.

The actual text of the third clause in the license being:

> Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

This should be easy to comply with.

One could would wrap that clause into quotes (") to put it into a google search engine.

This clause is OSI approved since included in BSD-3-Clause license:

https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

Debian takes being Free / Libre / Open Source very serious too. Search term:

> site:debian.org "Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."

https://ftp-master.debian.org/licenses/good/bsd/

FSF also does not have an issue with it.

> site:fsf.org "Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission."

3 authorities don't have an issue with modified BSD license (without advertising clause).

Rather, the QEMU installer doesn't need to have HAXM in its file name.

It may or may not be good idea to make HAXM an opt-in or opt-out in the installer. I'd argue opt-out if anything. But ideally for usability there is no need to mention HAXM. Things would just work out of the box.

As a role model for usability I'd recommend VirtualBox. Their installer also doesn't ask/show "enable acceleration" or "VirtualBox includes QEMU" or other components in prominent places.

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

The QEMU project itself does not provide any binaries for Windows, so I'm closing this ticket now. There are several people who provide binaries for Windows, so if you want to get one of these changed, please get in touch with the corresponding person who offers that binary instead.