Re: [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] User-space requirements for accelerator drivers

Jonathan Corbet
2021-09-11T14:51:03Z

James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> writes:

> On Fri, 2021-09-10 at 23:59 +0200, Alexandre Belloni wrote:
>> I think the question is not whether we want to forbid proprietary
>> user space using an API but whether we want to merge said API so the
>> license on the kernel doesn't matter much.
>
> I thought that *was* the statement I made in the last paragraph: we can
> choose whether or not to merge the enabling API into the kernel.
> However, if we merge it we can't choose whether a proprietary user
> space takes advantage of the API. My original reply was to the notion
> of EXPORT_USERSPACE_GPL, which I think we have no legal basis for
> enforcing without modifying the system exception.

That wasn't thinking when I pulled the idea of EXPORT_USERSPACE_GPL out
of whatever dark place it was lurking in. The idea was, instead, to
document that if your driver is using that interface, it won't be
considered for merging into the kernel in the absence of a working,
free, user-space implementation -- should we choose to adopt such a
policy, of course.

Nobody is trying to prohibit proprietary user space, that's not the
point.

jon