Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 18 Feb 2004 14:51:32 -0800 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: Non-GPL export of invalidate_mmap_range |
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Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote: > > I don't understand why IBM is pushing this dubious change right now,
It isn't a dubious change, on technical grounds. It is reasonable for a distributed filesystem to want to be able to shoot down pte's which map sections of pagecache. Just as it is reasonable for the filesystem to be able to shoot down the pagecache itself.
We've exported much lower-level stuff than this, because some in-kernel module happened to use it.
> GPL violation and thus copyright violation issues in Linux is the > last thing IBM wants to see in the press with the current mess going > on, right?
Well this is a chicken-and-egg, isn't it. The only way in which we can audit the IBM code for its derivedness is for the source to be made available. Although not necessarily under GPL. Or we accept Paul's claim, which I personally am inclined to do.
Look, this isn't going anywhere. We have a perfectly reasonable request from Paul to make this symbol available for IBM's filesystem. The usual way to handle this sort of thing is to say "ooh. shit. hard." and not reply to the email. That is not adequate and hopefully Paul will not let us get away with it.
We need to give Paul a reasoned and logically consistent answer to his request. For that we need to establish some sort of framework against which to make a decision and then make the decision.
One approach is a fait-accomplis from the top-level maintainer. Here, we're trying to do it in a different way.
I have proposed two criteria upon which this should be judged:
a) Does the export make technical sense? Do filesystems have legitimate need for access to this symbol?
(really, a) is sufficient grounds, but for real-world reasons:)
b) Does the IBM filsystem meet the kernel's licensing requirements?
It appears that the answers are a): yes and b) probably.
Please, feel free to add additional criteria. We could also ask "do we want to withhold this symbols to encourage IBM to GPL the filesystem" or "do we simply refuse to export any symbol which is not used by any GPL software" (if so, why?). Over to you.
But at the end of the day, if we decide to not export this symbol, we owe Paul a good, solid reason, yes? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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