Re: [RFC] vtunerc - virtual DVB device driver

["Rémi Denis-Courmont" <remi@remlab.net>]

Le mercredi 22 juin 2011 15:17:27 Mauro Carvalho Chehab, vous avez écrit :
> > My very little opinion is that waving GPL is way to the hell. Nobody told
> > me why similar technologies, in different kernel parts are acceptable,
> > but not here.
> 
> If you want to do the networking code at userspace, why do you need a
> kernel driver after all?

Are you seriously asking why people write tunneling drivers in user-space? Or 
why they want to use the kernel-space socket API and protocol stack?

> The proper solution is to write an userspace
> library for that, and either enclose such library inside the applications,
> or use LD_PRELOAD to bind the library to handle the open/close/ioctl glibc
> calls. libv4l does that. As it proofed to be a good library, now almost
> all V4L applications are using it.

No. Set aside the problem of licensing, the correct way is to reuse existing 
code, which means the layer-3/4 stacks and the socket API in net/*. That 
avoids duplicating efforts (and bugs) and allows socket API apps to run 
unchanged and without brittle hacks like LD_PRELOAD.

And indeed, that's what the Linux ecosystem does, thanks to the tuntap network 
device driver.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/
http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis