From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752683AbdCHL0X (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Mar 2017 06:26:23 -0500 Received: from hqemgate14.nvidia.com ([216.228.121.143]:19004 "EHLO hqemgate14.nvidia.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750853AbdCHL0U (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Mar 2017 06:26:20 -0500 X-PGP-Universal: processed; by hqpgpgate101.nvidia.com on Wed, 08 Mar 2017 02:01:13 -0800 Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/1] refcount: restore kref_get and kref_put to non-GPL status To: Greg Kroah-Hartman , References: <20170308092549.28982-1-jhubbard@nvidia.com> <20170308094810.GB30552@kroah.com> CC: Peter Zijlstra , Thomas Gleixner , Linus Torvalds , Ingo Molnar , X-Nvconfidentiality: public From: John Hubbard Message-ID: Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 01:59:33 -0800 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.7.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20170308094810.GB30552@kroah.com> X-Originating-IP: [10.2.166.22] X-ClientProxiedBy: DRHQMAIL108.nvidia.com (10.27.9.25) To HQMAIL107.nvidia.com (172.20.187.13) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 03/08/2017 01:48 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: > 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. Actually, we're still using this license string: MODULE_LICENSE("MIT"); which I understand does *not* grant access to GPL symbols. So I guess we'd have to switch over to "MIT/GPL", if I understand correctly, in order to be all correct here. > > 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. As much as I do enjoy chatting with those guys, I think I'll pass this time. :) thanks, John Hubbard NVIDIA > > thanks, > > greg k-h >