Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 1 Jun 2009 14:39:37 -0700 | From | Greg KH <> | Subject | Re: EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL recursive for shim and/or wrappers |
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On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 12:41:58PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > Does EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL imply that modules which make use of these > symbols must also use EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL for their own symbols? If so > then it would be clear of the recursive nature of intent.
I have had a group of lawyers and law-students study this very topic a lot in the past. It comes down to "intent". If you are creating a "shim" kernel module to merely export the symbols into the "non-gpl" namespace, the "intent" of such a piece of code is to obviously circumvent the original "intent" of the GPL-only marking.
This argument was successfully used to cause at least one company to stop doing this very thing.
Now if you try to explicitly document this somehow, well, I think you fall into the old "try to explicitly define everything" problem, which is counterproductive as people try to work around such definitions. I say leave it as-is, and let my lawyers have fun if anyone tries to abuse it :)
thanks,
greg k-h
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