Re: [PATCH] make security_ops EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL()

Linus Torvalds
2006-04-20T18:12:31Z

On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Greg KH wrote:
>
> Some closed source modules are taking advantage of the fact that the
> security_ops variable is available to them, so they are using it to hook
> into parts of the kernel that should only be available to "real" users
> of the LSM interface (which is required to be under the GPL.)

I'm really not going to apply this.

It's insane.

"security_ops" is used by _anything_ that uses the inline functions in
<linux/security.h>, which suddenly means that a non-GPL module cannot use
_any_ of the standard security tests. That's insane.

And there's no point to this patch. The "explanation" I have seen so far
is that some strange root-kit could take over the security ops. That's
just crazy talk. If you're a root-kit, would you care about the copyright
license? No. So this patch just makes zero sense from any standpoint.

If people want to remove security_ops, that's fine (not for 2.6.17, but
assuming you guys can come to some reasonable agreement, at some later
date). But turning it into a GPL-only, but leaving all the infrastructure
requiring it is not.

Linus