Re: [PATCH 0/1] refcount: restore kref_get and kref_put to non-GPL status

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2017-03-08T10:21:44Z

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:59:33AM -0800, John Hubbard wrote:
>
>
> On 03/08/2017 01:48 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:25:48AM -0800, john.hubbard@gmail.com wrote:
> > > From: John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Say, I'm 99% sure that this was just an oversight, so
> > > I'm sticking my neck out here and floating a patch to
> > > Put Things Back. I'm hoping that there is not some
> > > firm reason to GPL-protect the basic kref_get and
> > > kref_put routines, because when designing some
> > > recent new (open-source, yay!) device drivers, we relied
> > > on this being available, even for MIT-licensed code.
> >
> > MIT-licensed code should be just fine with GPL symbols, just use the
> > correct MODULE_LICENSE() setting and all is good.
>
> Actually, we're still using this license string:
>
> MODULE_LICENSE("MIT");
>
> which I understand does *not* grant access to GPL symbols. So I guess we'd
> have to switch over to "MIT/GPL", if I understand correctly, in order to be
> all correct here.

You need to write this as:
MODULE_LICENSE("Dual MIT/GPL");
for the linker to handle this properly as that is the string it is
looking for.

thanks,

greg k-h