From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail-ww0-f52.google.com (mail-ww0-f52.google.com [74.125.82.52]) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D7DCB70CD for ; Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:56:46 +1000 (EST) Received: by wwi18 with SMTP id 18so851900wwi.21 for ; Sat, 18 Sep 2010 09:56:44 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <70810686-1EB6-4AD9-A89B-C2A8BA6AC30D@freescale.com> References: <1284764008-19469-1-git-send-email-timur@freescale.com> <1284779678.30449.108.camel@pasglop> <70810686-1EB6-4AD9-A89B-C2A8BA6AC30D@freescale.com> Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 12:56:44 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] powerpc: export ppc_tb_freq so that modules can reference it From: Josh Boyer To: Kumar Gala Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org, Tabi Timur-B04825 , linux-watchdog@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Linux on PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Kumar Gala wro= te: > > On Sep 18, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Tabi Timur-B04825 wrote: > >> On Sep 17, 2010, at 10:14 PM, "Benjamin Herrenschmidt" wrote: >> >>> On Fri, 2010-09-17 at 20:20 -0500, Timur Tabi wrote: >>>> I don't see any reason to limit it to GPL drivers. =A0Not only that, b= ut >>>> then we'll have this: >>> >>> I do >> >> Can you elaborate on that, or are you just going to pull rank on me? >> >>> >>>> EXPORT_SYMBOL(ppc_proc_freq); >>>> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(ppc_tb_freq); >>>> >>>> That just looks dumb. >>> >>> Right, so send a patch to fix the first one too :-) > > I don't think either of these should be EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. =A0Why shouldn= 't a binary module be allowed to know these frequencies? =A0My view is why = preclude anyone from using this how they want. =A0If they want to live in t= he gray area so be it. =A0Who am I to say they shouldn't have that choice. > It is not, in my opinion, about what is technically possible and what isn't. The kernel is licensed under the GPL. This is a Linux kernel only symbol. One would be hard pressed to claim they have a driver that wasn't written for Linux that happens to need that symbol. As a member of the Linux kernel community, I find it important to encourage the contribution of code back to the kernel, and this is one way to help that. This isn't BSD. Besides, a developer is free to export it however they wish in their own kernel tree. They can deviate from mainline if they so choose. josh