Re: Licensing conflict with OpenAFS kernel module

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

Sidney Cammeresi wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 at 10.27.42 -0500, Anthony Liguori wrote:
>   
>> Sidney Cammeresi wrote:
>>     
>>> I recently upgraded two Xen domU instances from 2.6.12.6 to 2.6.16.
>>> Because I am running the OpenAFS client on each of them, I took the
>>> opportunity to upgrade that (from 1.4.0 to 1.4.1) which required building
>>> a new kernel module.  (The AFS client is partly in userspace and partly
>>> in the kernel.)
>>>
>>> Loading the new module failed:
>>>
>>> 		openafs: Unknown symbol force_evtchn_callback
>>> 		openafs: Unknown symbol xen_features
>>>       
>> I think you should urge OpenAFS to relicense their module under the GPL.
>>     
>
> Well this is not their decision given that the code came from IBM in
> the first place.
>
> I note, however, your ibm.com e-mail address.  Do you perhaps know the
> channels in IBM to go through to discuss IBM relicensing their code under
> the GPL?
>   

I'd suggest bringing this up within the OpenAFS community.  If they are 
making direct use of Xen-specific functions, then they can potentially 
find a work around.

If we've made it so that a non-GPL symbol depends on one of our GPL'd 
symbols, then that may be a problem on our part.  I don't know whether 
this is an acceptable thing to do.  Sounds like an issue that needs to 
be discussed on LKML.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori