Re: [PATCH] splice exports

[Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de>]

On Sat, Apr 01 2006, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 18:14 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > On Fri, Mar 31 2006, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > >> Jens Axboe wrote:
> > >>> On Fri, Mar 31 2006, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > >>>> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 23:06 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > >>>>> Woe be unto he who builds their filesystems as modules.
> > >>>> since splice support is highly linux specific and new.. shouldn't these
> > >>>> be _GPL exports?
> > >>> Yes they should, I'll add that to the current splice tree.
> > >> Why?  We don't usually restrict filesystems in such ways...  I would 
> > >> rather a binary-only module reference generic_file_splice_read() than 
> > >> create its own.
> > > 
> > > You could use that very same argument for any piece of the kernel, then,
> > > so I don't think that adds much value to _not_ exporting it GPL.
> > 
> > Not really, because I'm considering the Real World(tm) users, not 
> > abstract theory :)  The other filesystem junk is exported non-GPL, and 
> > existing binary-only filesystems use that stuff.
> > 
> > IOW its a bit rude to say "oh you can have your BO filesystem, just not 
> > splice support."
> 
> 
> it's a bit like saying "you can use all the standard unix interfaces,
> but these are very linux specific"; eg the same arguments for making lsm
> and other pieces _GPL; they're so linux specific that users that use
> these do so with linux in mind etc

Linus seems to agree with the _GPL not being appropriate as well, so I
guess I'll bow to the majority. This time :-)

-- 
Jens Axboe