Re: [PATCH] USB: mark USB drivers as being GPL only

Greg KH
2008-02-04T15:06:44Z

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:43:11PM +0100, Matthew wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> >Over two years ago, the Linux USB developers stated that they believed
> >there was no way to create a USB kernel driver that was not under the
> >GPL. This patch moves the USB apis to enforce that decision.
>
> >There are no known closed source USB drivers in the wild, so this patch
> >should cause no problems.
>
> hm, I'm not sure, but will your patch make Samsung's Unified Linux
> Driver for printing & scanning stop working?
> http://org.downloadcenter.samsung.com/downloadfile/ContentsFile.aspx?CDSite=DE&CttFileID=801111&CDCttType=DR&ModelType=N&ModelName=SCX-4521F&VPath=DR/200707/20070720165133984_UnifiedLinuxDriver.tar.gz

No, in looking at that package, I do not see any kernel modules, just
userspace programs. They must be using the usbfs interface to the
kernel from userspace, a perfict example of how a vendor can control USB
device from userspace, without needing a kernel driver :)

So it should continue to work just fine.

> another Manufacturer / Candidate I'm worrying about is Brother:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
> Brother is providing opensource cups drivers (kudos to the developers
> @ Brother for that!), the sane-drivers however seem to be closed
> source, will those work ?

Both sane and cups are userspace programs, using usbfs and the kernel
usblp driver respectively, and should not see anything change at all.

> I'm no developer, just a heavy user ;) so unfortunately I can't tell
> whether those drivers are dependent on being NOT GPL,

You would be seeing some warnings in the kernel log for the past 2 years
when using these products, about how the symbols were going to be
changed in the future. If not, you are fine.

thanks,

greg k-h