Messages in this thread Patch in this message |  | | Date | Thu, 18 Oct 2001 11:00:09 -0500 | From | "M. R. Brown" <> | Subject | Re: Input on the Non-GPL Modules |
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* Greg Boyce <gboyce@rakis.net> on Thu, Oct 18, 2001:
> > However, with the addition of GPL only symbols, you add motivation for > conning. Not by end users, but by the developers of binary only > modules. If they export the GPL license symbol, they gain access to > kernel symbols that they may want to use. Since no code is actually being > stolen, would this kind of trick actually cause a licensing violation? >
Yeah, but the GPL requires availability of source, so I don't see how they could get around that (it would no longer be a closed-source module and might as well be GPL'd).
Hmm, does MODULE_LICENSE() actually state that the module is covered under the GPL? If not, could something like this work?
--- module.h.orig Thu Oct 18 10:56:09 2001 +++ module.h Thu Oct 18 10:58:43 2001 @@ -286,7 +286,11 @@ #define MODULE_LICENSE(license) \ static const char __module_license[] __attribute__((section(".modinfo"))) = \ -"license=" license +"license=" license; \ +static const char __module_license_blurb[] __attribute__((section(".modinfo"))) = \ +"license_blurb=This module is covered under the GPL v2 or any later version. " \ +"Please see the file COPYING in the toplevel directory of the source archive " \ +"of this module." /* Define the module variable, and usage macros. */ extern struct module __this_module;
Of course this can still be circumvented by removing that string from include/linux/module.h, but you'd still be able to identify renegade modules, since they perpetrate as GPL'd modules.
M. R. [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] |  |