From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752099AbdCHKLC (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Mar 2017 05:11:02 -0500 Received: from mail.linuxfoundation.org ([140.211.169.12]:46744 "EHLO mail.linuxfoundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751064AbdCHKK6 (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Mar 2017 05:10:58 -0500 Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 10:48:10 +0100 From: Greg Kroah-Hartman To: john.hubbard@gmail.com Cc: Peter Zijlstra , Thomas Gleixner , Linus Torvalds , Ingo Molnar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, John Hubbard Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/1] refcount: restore kref_get and kref_put to non-GPL status Message-ID: <20170308094810.GB30552@kroah.com> References: <20170308092549.28982-1-jhubbard@nvidia.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20170308092549.28982-1-jhubbard@nvidia.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.8.0 (2017-02-23) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:25:48AM -0800, john.hubbard@gmail.com wrote: > From: John Hubbard > > Hi, > > Say, I'm 99% sure that this was just an oversight, so > I'm sticking my neck out here and floating a patch to > Put Things Back. I'm hoping that there is not some > firm reason to GPL-protect the basic kref_get and > kref_put routines, because when designing some > recent new (open-source, yay!) device drivers, we relied > on this being available, even for MIT-licensed code. MIT-licensed code should be just fine with GPL symbols, just use the correct MODULE_LICENSE() setting and all is good. As all of the previous kref functions were in a GPL-only header file, and included directly that way, they were already GPL-only symbols, so there really was no change here except now the linker checks them. If you have questions about using inline GPL-only functions from a .h file, in a non-GPL codebase, please consult your corporate lawyer to get clarification. thanks, greg k-h