From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755957AbZBRSC4 (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:02:56 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751725AbZBRSCq (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:02:46 -0500 Received: from tomts10-srv.bellnexxia.net ([209.226.175.54]:35570 "EHLO tomts10-srv.bellnexxia.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752141AbZBRSCp (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:02:45 -0500 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AuMFAAjam0lMQWt2/2dsb2JhbACBbtNFhBMG Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:02:32 -0500 From: Mathieu Desnoyers To: "Paul E. McKenney" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, ltt-dev@lists.casi.polymtl.ca, pierre-marc.fournier@polymtl.ca Subject: Moving Userspace RCU (urcu) from GPL to LGPL license Message-ID: <20090218180232.GA21389@Krystal> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Editor: vi X-Info: http://krystal.dyndns.org:8080 X-Operating-System: Linux/2.6.21.3-grsec (i686) X-Uptime: 12:49:56 up 48 days, 17:48, 4 users, load average: 1.06, 0.61, 0.45 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi Paul, I think that it would be good to distribute the userspace rcu work we are currently doing (ref. : http://lttng.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=userspace-rcu.git) as a LGPL library rather than GPL so it can be linked to the userspace part of the LTTng tracer. We want to provide this tracer as a LGPL library so proprietary applications can link to it and therefore be traceable. The only thing is that we cannot put GPL code into a LGPL library. The other point is that I use a few low-level primitives from the Linux kernel header (e.g. atomic increment for x86, barrier macros). Those are simple one-liners, but, still, I wonder about the licensing implications. I could simply "rewrite" them, but that would be a shame to have a different primitive implementation of those simple primitives in userspace and in kernel-space just for a licensing question. I would really like to keep the Linux kernel coding-style within this library. So the question would be : are those headers, distributed with the Linux kernel, distributed under GPL license ? Is there any special clause that would permit using their content under LGPL ? If not, would the community see such use favorably ? Ideas/comments are welcome. Thanks, Mathieu -- Mathieu Desnoyers OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68