From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757769AbZFAUhX (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 16:37:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754128AbZFAUhN (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 16:37:13 -0400 Received: from c60.cesmail.net ([216.154.195.49]:60831 "EHLO c60.cesmail.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754995AbZFAUhM (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 16:37:12 -0400 Subject: Re: EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL recursive for shim and/or wrappers From: Pavel Roskin To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Cc: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Greg KH , Al Viro , Aaditya.Rai@atheros.com, Prem.Kumar@atheros.com, Stephen.Chen@atheros.com, Rahul.Sridhar@atheros.com, Allen.Tsai@atheros.com In-Reply-To: <43e72e890906011241u24b82cc3gc06bf7be4f43075e@mail.gmail.com> References: <43e72e890906011241u24b82cc3gc06bf7be4f43075e@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:37:12 -0400 Message-Id: <1243888632.16765.12.camel@mj> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.26.1 (2.26.1-2.fc11) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hello, Luis! On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 12:41 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > The intention behind EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL seems clear to me -- prevent > proprietary drivers from using GPL-only symbols. I believe the intention was to warn the users that they know so much about the kernel that they should be considered a derived work of the kernel and thus should be under GPL themselves. It doesn't fully exclude the "shims". I believe it could be successfully argued in the court that proprietary code using shims is not a derived work of the kernel if certain care is taken not to expose the writers of the proprietary part to the internals of the GPL code. I'm not taking the position of proponents of non-free software. GPL is valuable both because of what it permits (e.g. commercial use) and by what it forbids (e.g. making the code proprietary). It's better not to change the rules, as it negatively affects the trust of other people. Moreover, in this case we could be deceiving ourselves that we can change the rules, as the definition of the derived work lies outside the scope of GPL. IANAL and IMHO -- Regards, Pavel Roskin