Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

David Woodhouse
2005-12-05T21:19:45Z

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 18:26 +0000, Andrew Walrond wrote:
> > On December 6th, 2005 the kernel developers en mass decide that binary
> > modules are legally fine and also essential for the progress of linux,
>
> Has anyone (influential) actually being toying with this idea? I hope not, but
> if they are, I'd like to know who to lobby...

http://git.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=e3c3374fbf7efe9487edc53cd10436ed641983aa

Remember that the only distinction between EXPORT_SYMBOL() and
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() is that the latter is a technological measure to
prevent abuse. The use of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() cannot actually impose any
additional restrictions over and above what the GPL requires of
EXPORT_SYMBOL() -- because any additional restrictions would themselves
violate the GPL.

Thus, the only point in the above-linked patch is to remove a technical
measure which prevents abuse. I feel very strongly that it should be
reverted.

--
dwmw2