[PATCH] Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[PATCH] Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

Way back in 2008 we didn't have "robust" in-kernel documentation system,
so the idea of putting something like the kernel driver statement in the
kernel tree wasn't even imagined.  But now that has changed, so add the
old document to the kernel source itself to allow for us to properly
reference it in one canonical place (as the LF wiki keeps moving things
around.)

This also will allow people to add their names to it, as I seem to have
lost the ability to do that by not knowing how to edit things on the
original document.

Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
---

Jon, if this isn't the correct place to put the document, I'd be glad to
move it elsewhere, I just picked the first place that it seemed to fit
into.


 Documentation/process/index.rst                   |   1 +
 Documentation/process/kernel-driver-statement.rst | 199 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 200 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/process/kernel-driver-statement.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/process/index.rst b/Documentation/process/index.rst
index 82fc399fcd33..68454319f006 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/index.rst
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ Below are the essential guides that every developer should read.
    submitting-patches
    coding-style
    email-clients
+   kernel-driver-statement
 
 Other guides to the community that are of interest to most developers are: 
 
diff --git a/Documentation/process/kernel-driver-statement.rst b/Documentation/process/kernel-driver-statement.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..60d9d868f300
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/process/kernel-driver-statement.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
+Kernel Driver Statement
+-----------------------
+
+Position Statement on Linux Kernel Modules
+==========================================
+
+
+We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source
+Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable. We have
+repeatedly found them to be detrimental to Linux users, businesses, and
+the greater Linux ecosystem. Such modules negate the openness,
+stability, flexibility, and maintainability of the Linux development
+model and shut their users off from the expertise of the Linux
+community. Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their
+customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors.
+Therefore, in order to take full advantage of the cost savings and
+shared support benefits open source has to offer, we urge vendors to
+adopt a policy of supporting their customers on Linux with open-source
+kernel code.
+
+We speak only for ourselves, and not for any company we might work for
+today, have in the past, or will in the future.
+
+ - Dave Airlie
+ - Nick Andrew
+ - Jens Axboe
+ - Ralf Baechle
+ - Felipe Balbi
+ - Ohad Ben-Cohen
+ - Muli Ben-Yehuda
+ - Jiri Benc
+ - Arnd Bergmann
+ - Thomas Bogendoerfer
+ - Vitaly Bordug
+ - James Bottomley
+ - Josh Boyer
+ - Neil Brown
+ - Mark Brown
+ - David Brownell
+ - Michael Buesch
+ - Franck Bui-Huu
+ - Adrian Bunk
+ - François Cami
+ - Ralph Campbell
+ - Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino
+ - Mauro Carvalho Chehab
+ - Denis Cheng
+ - Jonathan Corbet
+ - Glauber Costa
+ - Alan Cox
+ - Magnus Damm
+ - Ahmed S. Darwish
+ - Robert P. J. Day
+ - Hans de Goede
+ - Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo
+ - Helge Deller
+ - Jean Delvare
+ - Mathieu Desnoyers
+ - Sven-Thorsten Dietrich
+ - Alexey Dobriyan
+ - Daniel Drake
+ - Alex Dubov
+ - Randy Dunlap
+ - Michael Ellerman
+ - Pekka Enberg
+ - Jan Engelhardt
+ - Mark Fasheh
+ - J. Bruce Fields
+ - Larry Finger
+ - Jeremy Fitzhardinge
+ - Mike Frysinger
+ - Kumar Gala
+ - Robin Getz
+ - Liam Girdwood
+ - Jan-Benedict Glaw
+ - Thomas Gleixner
+ - Brice Goglin
+ - Cyrill Gorcunov
+ - Andy Gospodarek
+ - Thomas Graf
+ - Krzysztof Halasa
+ - Harvey Harrison
+ - Stephen Hemminger
+ - Michael Hennerich
+ - Tejun Heo
+ - Benjamin Herrenschmidt
+ - Kristian Høgsberg
+ - Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
+ - Marcel Holtmann
+ - Mike Isely
+ - Takashi Iwai
+ - Olof Johansson
+ - Dave Jones
+ - Jesper Juhl
+ - Matthias Kaehlcke
+ - Kenji Kaneshige
+ - Jan Kara
+ - Jeremy Kerr
+ - Russell King
+ - Olaf Kirch
+ - Roel Kluin
+ - Hans-Jürgen Koch
+ - Auke Kok
+ - Peter Korsgaard
+ - Jiri Kosina
+ - Mariusz Kozlowski
+ - Greg Kroah-Hartman
+ - Michael Krufky
+ - Aneesh Kumar
+ - Clemens Ladisch
+ - Christoph Lameter
+ - Gunnar Larisch
+ - Anders Larsen
+ - Grant Likely
+ - John W. Linville
+ - Yinghai Lu
+ - Tony Luck
+ - Pavel Machek
+ - Matt Mackall
+ - Paul Mackerras
+ - Roland McGrath
+ - Patrick McHardy
+ - Kyle McMartin
+ - Paul Menage
+ - Thierry Merle
+ - Eric Miao
+ - Akinobu Mita
+ - Ingo Molnar
+ - James Morris
+ - Andrew Morton
+ - Paul Mundt
+ - Oleg Nesterov
+ - Luca Olivetti
+ - S.Çağlar Onur
+ - Pierre Ossman
+ - Keith Owens
+ - Venkatesh Pallipadi
+ - Nick Piggin
+ - Nicolas Pitre
+ - Evgeniy Polyakov
+ - Richard Purdie
+ - Mike Rapoport
+ - Sam Ravnborg
+ - Gerrit Renker
+ - Stefan Richter
+ - David Rientjes
+ - Luis R. Rodriguez
+ - Stefan Roese
+ - Francois Romieu
+ - Rami Rosen
+ - Stephen Rothwell
+ - Maciej W. Rozycki
+ - Mark Salyzyn
+ - Yoshinori Sato
+ - Deepak Saxena
+ - Holger Schurig
+ - Amit Shah
+ - Yoshihiro Shimoda
+ - Sergei Shtylyov
+ - Kay Sievers
+ - Sebastian Siewior
+ - Rik Snel
+ - Jes Sorensen
+ - Alexey Starikovskiy
+ - Alan Stern
+ - Timur Tabi
+ - Hirokazu Takata
+ - Eliezer Tamir
+ - Eugene Teo
+ - Doug Thompson
+ - FUJITA Tomonori
+ - Dmitry Torokhov
+ - Marcelo Tosatti
+ - Steven Toth
+ - Theodore Tso
+ - Matthias Urlichs
+ - Geert Uytterhoeven
+ - Arjan van de Ven
+ - Ivo van Doorn
+ - Rik van Riel
+ - Wim Van Sebroeck
+ - Hans Verkuil
+ - Horst H. von Brand
+ - Dmitri Vorobiev
+ - Anton Vorontsov
+ - Daniel Walker
+ - Johannes Weiner
+ - Harald Welte
+ - Matthew Wilcox
+ - Dan J. Williams
+ - Darrick J. Wong
+ - David Woodhouse
+ - Chris Wright
+ - Bryan Wu
+ - Rafael J. Wysocki
+ - Herbert Xu
+ - Vlad Yasevich
+ - Peter Zijlstra
+ - Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz
-- 
2.14.2

Re: [PATCH] Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:10:38 +0200
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> escreveu:

> Way back in 2008 we didn't have "robust" in-kernel documentation system,
> so the idea of putting something like the kernel driver statement in the
> kernel tree wasn't even imagined.  But now that has changed, so add the
> old document to the kernel source itself to allow for us to properly
> reference it in one canonical place (as the LF wiki keeps moving things
> around.)
> 
> This also will allow people to add their names to it, as I seem to have
> lost the ability to do that by not knowing how to edit things on the
> original document.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

>From my side:

Acked-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>


Thanks,
Mauro

Re: [PATCH] Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2017 11:10:38 +0200
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Way back in 2008 we didn't have "robust" in-kernel documentation system,
> so the idea of putting something like the kernel driver statement in the
> kernel tree wasn't even imagined.  But now that has changed, so add the
> old document to the kernel source itself to allow for us to properly
> reference it in one canonical place (as the LF wiki keeps moving things
> around.)
> 
> This also will allow people to add their names to it, as I seem to have
> lost the ability to do that by not knowing how to edit things on the
> original document.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> ---
> 
> Jon, if this isn't the correct place to put the document, I'd be glad to
> move it elsewhere, I just picked the first place that it seemed to fit
> into.

It seems like the perfect place to me, I went ahead and applied it.

Thanks,

jon

Re: Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Wolfram Sang]

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On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 11:10:38AM +0200, gregkh@linuxfoundation.org wrote:
> Way back in 2008 we didn't have "robust" in-kernel documentation system,
> so the idea of putting something like the kernel driver statement in the
> kernel tree wasn't even imagined.  But now that has changed, so add the
> old document to the kernel source itself to allow for us to properly
> reference it in one canonical place (as the LF wiki keeps moving things
> around.)

Cool, I like it much to see it added to the kernel tree.

But could you explain what "robust" means in this context? And what
has changed which makes it "robust"? Sphinx?

I am interested in how such documents are handled best.


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Re: Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[gregkh]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 06:14:13PM +0200, Wolfram Sang wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 06, 2017 at 11:10:38AM +0200, gregkh@linuxfoundation.org wrote:
> > Way back in 2008 we didn't have "robust" in-kernel documentation system,
> > so the idea of putting something like the kernel driver statement in the
> > kernel tree wasn't even imagined.  But now that has changed, so add the
> > old document to the kernel source itself to allow for us to properly
> > reference it in one canonical place (as the LF wiki keeps moving things
> > around.)
> 
> Cool, I like it much to see it added to the kernel tree.
> 
> But could you explain what "robust" means in this context?

We did not have a way to easily turn the files in Documentation/ into
html and pdf docs like we now do.  The documentation is now
auto-generated and placed up on kernel.org here:
	https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/

> And what has changed which makes it "robust"? Sphinx?

Yes, remember the mess we had before?

Not that sphinx doesn't have it's own issues, but you have to admit it
is much better now than it used to be, right?

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Wolfram Sang]

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> Not that sphinx doesn't have it's own issues, but you have to admit it
> is much better now than it used to be, right?

That goes without saying, but we still added plain textfiles to
Documentation/ since 2008, so I was wondering...


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Re: Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[gregkh]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 08:09:59PM +0200, Wolfram Sang wrote:
> 
> > Not that sphinx doesn't have it's own issues, but you have to admit it
> > is much better now than it used to be, right?
> 
> That goes without saying, but we still added plain textfiles to
> Documentation/ since 2008, so I was wondering...

And really, all news one should be in correct markdown format, as it is
almost identical to a "normal" text file.  Heck, it really is just a
"plain" textfile, you can read it as-such, right?

thanks,

greg k-h

Re: Documentation: add Kernel Driver Statement to the kernel

[Jani Nikula]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2017, "gregkh@linuxfoundation.org" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> And really, all news one should be in correct markdown format, as it is
> almost identical to a "normal" text file.  Heck, it really is just a
> "plain" textfile, you can read it as-such, right?

*cough* reStructuredText *cough*

BR,
Jani.

-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Technology Center