Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:17:49 -0400 | From | Pierre-Marc Fournier <> | Subject | Re: Relicensing tracepoints and markers to Dual LGPL v2.1/GPL v2,headers to Dual BSD/GPL |
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Ingo Molnar wrote: > > But i also disagree with it on a technical level: code duplication is > _bad_. Why does the code have to be duplicated in user-space like that? > I'd like Linux tracing code to be in the kernel repo. Why isnt this done > properly, as part of the kernel project - to make sure it all stays in > sync? >
If you mean that this code should solely be used inside the kernel, then what you propose technically does not work. There is a very high cost to accessing kernel code from userspace. This cost is simply unacceptable for the kind of userspace tracing that is needed today.
OTOH, if you mean that the code should reside in the kernel repository, as GPL, and should be included inside userspace applications from there, then you don't have this problem. But you create an even worse problem, which is that only GPL applications can be distributed with support for tracing compiled in. Again, this won't do for the needs of the industry.
So the GPL code will have to be rewritten. And this will result in the exact same drawbacks you are trying to avoid by being against dual-licensing. The goal of dual-licensing is to make it possible to keep the code in sync between kernel and userspace, not the opposite!
pmf
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