From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754564AbXLATTw (ORCPT ); Sat, 1 Dec 2007 14:19:52 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752731AbXLATTf (ORCPT ); Sat, 1 Dec 2007 14:19:35 -0500 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:38294 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752674AbXLATTe (ORCPT ); Sat, 1 Dec 2007 14:19:34 -0500 Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 11:17:36 -0800 From: Stephen Hemminger To: Mark Lord Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Greg KH , Tejun Heo , Linux Containers , netdev@vger.kernel.org, cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com, stern@rowland.harvard.edu, kay.sievers@vrfy.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Herbert Xu , David Miller , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL" Message-ID: <20071201111736.297dd99a@freepuppy.rosehill> In-Reply-To: <47515D39.9030900@rtr.ca> References: <47515D39.9030900@rtr.ca> Organization: Linux Foundation X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.0.2 (GTK+ 2.12.1; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:10:17 -0500 Mark Lord wrote: > > Now that we have network namespace support merged it is time to > > revisit the sysfs support so we can remove the dependency on !SYSFS. > ... > > Now that the namespace updates are part of 2.6.24, > there is a major inconsistency in network EXPORT_SYMBOLs. > > It used to be that an external network module could get away without > having to add a MODULE_LICENSE("GPL*") line to the source. > > In support of that, common networking functions (still) use EXPORT_SYMBOL() > rather than the more restrictive EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(). > > Eg. register_netdev(), sk_alloc(), __dev_get_by_name(). > > But now, none of those three are actually usable by default, > because they all require "init_net", which is EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(). > Then init_net needs to be not GPL limited. Sorry, we need to allow non GPL network drivers. There is a fine line between keeping the binary seething masses from accessing random kernel functions, and allowing reasonable (but still non GPL) things like ndiswrapper to use network device interface. -- Stephen Hemminger