Re: 2.7 thoughts: common well-architected object model

Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-10-12T16:44:40Z

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1497 bytes --]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 09:04:19 PDT, retu said:

> What's the solution out of this - a clean, open object
> model designed by the core folks, extensible and free
> of licensing issues - and that in the next months.

The point that seems to be continually missed is that although
it may be a *fine* concept for userspace, it doesn't belong in the
kernel. There's a syscall barrier for multiple reasons, some technical
and some political/legal.

If anything, we collectively DON'T want to go there because a clever lawyer
could argue that doing a "all the way from kernel to userspace" object-oriented
scheme would make essentially all userspace code a derived work, since it would
be so tightly entwined with the kernel implementation (basically, you'd be
subjecting all of userspace to the same "derived work" limbo that closed-source
kernel modules currently live in). This could render totally irrelevant this
text from /usr/src/linux/COPYING:

NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

Yes, this would mean that userspace would be GPL'ed as well, and
you'll never see Oracle on a Linux box again for a VERY long time....

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 226 bytes --]