From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754359AbZFAVn2 (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 17:43:28 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754128AbZFAVnR (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 17:43:17 -0400 Received: from kroah.org ([198.145.64.141]:56445 "EHLO coco.kroah.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754007AbZFAVnQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Jun 2009 17:43:16 -0400 Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 14:39:37 -0700 From: Greg KH To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Cc: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Al Viro , Pavel Roskin , Aaditya.Rai@atheros.com, Prem.Kumar@atheros.com, Stephen.Chen@atheros.com, Rahul.Sridhar@atheros.com, Allen.Tsai@atheros.com Subject: Re: EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL recursive for shim and/or wrappers Message-ID: <20090601213937.GA29774@kroah.com> References: <43e72e890906011241u24b82cc3gc06bf7be4f43075e@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <43e72e890906011241u24b82cc3gc06bf7be4f43075e@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 12:41:58PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > Does EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL imply that modules which make use of these > symbols must also use EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL for their own symbols? If so > then it would be clear of the recursive nature of intent. I have had a group of lawyers and law-students study this very topic a lot in the past. It comes down to "intent". If you are creating a "shim" kernel module to merely export the symbols into the "non-gpl" namespace, the "intent" of such a piece of code is to obviously circumvent the original "intent" of the GPL-only marking. This argument was successfully used to cause at least one company to stop doing this very thing. Now if you try to explicitly document this somehow, well, I think you fall into the old "try to explicitly define everything" problem, which is counterproductive as people try to work around such definitions. I say leave it as-is, and let my lawyers have fun if anyone tries to abuse it :) thanks, greg k-h