From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753526AbXLCS7r (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:59:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751977AbXLCS73 (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:59:29 -0500 Received: from mtagate1.de.ibm.com ([195.212.29.150]:40787 "EHLO mtagate1.de.ibm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751956AbXLCS71 (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Dec 2007 13:59:27 -0500 Message-ID: <475451B1.1030006@free.fr> Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:57:53 +0100 From: Daniel Lezcano User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20071115) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ben Greear CC: "Eric W. Biederman" , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, containers@lists.osdl.org, Mark Lord , Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL" References: <47515D39.9030900@rtr.ca> <20071201111736.297dd99a@freepuppy.rosehill> <20071201163035.321fd554@freepuppy.rosehill> <475227B1.2060802@rtr.ca> <20071201202354.672aed18@freepuppy.rosehill> <47530778.7030605@candelatech.com> <47530FAC.1070804@trash.net> <47544896.7070101@candelatech.com> In-Reply-To: <47544896.7070101@candelatech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Ben Greear wrote: > Eric W. Biederman wrote: >> Patrick McHardy writes: >> >> >>> Ben Greear wrote: >>> >>>> I have a binary module that uses dev_get_by_name...it's sort of a >>>> bridge-like >>>> thing and >>>> needs user-space to tell it which device to listen for packets on... >>>> >>>> This code doesn't need or care about name-spaces, so I don't see how >>>> it could >>>> really >>>> be infringing on the author's code (any worse than loading a binary >>>> driver >>>> into the kernel >>>> ever does). >>>> >> >> Regardless of infringement it is incompatible with a complete network >> namespace implementation. Further it sounds like the module you are >> describing defines a kernel ABI without being merged and hopes that >> ABI will still be supportable in the future. Honestly I think doing so >> is horrible code maintenance policy. >> > I don't mind if the ABI changes, so long as I can still use something > similar. > > The namespace logic is interesting to me in general, but at this point I > can't think of a way that > it actually helps this particular module. All I really need is a way to > grab every frame > from eth0 and then transmit it to eth1. I'm currently doing this by > finding the netdevice > and registering a raw-packet protocol (ie, like tcpdump would do). At > least up to 2.6.23, > this does not require any hacks to the kernel and uses only non GPL > exported symbols. > > Based on my understanding of the namespace logic, if I never add any > namespaces, > the general network layout should look similar to how it does today, so > I should have > no logical problem with my module. > >> Once things are largely complete it makes sense to argue with out of >> tree module authors that because they don't have network namespace >> support in their modules, their modules are broken. > Does this imply that every module that accesses the network code *must* > become > GPL simply because it must interact with namespace logic that is > exported as GPL only symbols? That's right, with init_net's EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL and dev_get_xx, we enforce people to be GPL whatever they didn't asked to have the namespaces in their code. Eric, why can we simply change EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to EXPORT_SYMBOL for init_net ?