Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:11:32 +0100 | From | David Weinehall <> | Subject | Re: Non-GPL export of invalidate_mmap_range |
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On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 02:51:32PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > 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.
Probably not always the right choice, though... I highly suspect we far to much of our intestines are easily available.
[snip]
> 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.
a.) Definitely b.) Perhaps
> 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.
Well, I wasn't altogether joking when I suggested IBM should GPL gpfs. A couple of questions:
* Is gpfs a commercial product in the sense that it's something IBM earns revenue from? * Does gpfs contain third party "Intellectual Property" (no, I'm not particularly fond of using that expression, but I digress)
If the answer is NO to both of these questions, why _not_ GPL the code? If the answer is NO to only the second question, is the revenue from gpfs big enough to warrant keeping it proprietary?
> But at the end of the day, if we decide to not export this symbol, we owe > Paul a good, solid reason, yes?
Yup. Silence isn't always golden, sometimes it's outright shitty.
Regards: David Weinehall -- /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander (\ // Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel // Dance across the winter sky // \) http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ (/ Full colour fire (/ - 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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