From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca>, Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>,
Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>,
Linux Containers <containers@lists.osdl.org>,
netdev@vger.kernel.org, cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com,
stern@rowland.harvard.edu, kay.sievers@vrfy.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>,
David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL"
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2007 12:54:52 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m1bq9a5gxf.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20071201111736.297dd99a@freepuppy.rosehill> (Stephen Hemminger's message of "Sat, 1 Dec 2007 11:17:36 -0800")
Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org> writes:
> On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:10:17 -0500
> Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca> 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().
Which alternative kernel does the above comment apply to?
> Then init_net needs to be not GPL limited. Sorry, we need to allow
> non GPL network drivers.
For the record network drivers should not be affected. As a practical
measure that just gets unmaintainable and it is unnecessary.
There are specific exceptions where network drivers mess with the userspace
interfaces where I do have some impact. However if you are messing
with our userspace interface especially with network namespaces in place
I don't see how it is possible for you to be anything other then a derivative
work, and something we need in tree to keep maintenance a manageable thing.
It should just be the core of the network stack that struct net has some
effect on.
> 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.
Does ndiswrapper break? If so what dubious and unsupportable thing is
it doing?
Eric
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-12-01 19:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 64+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-12-01 9:06 [PATCH 0/10] sysfs network namespace support Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:12 ` [PATCH 01/10] sysfs: Make sysfs_mount static again Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:13 ` [PATCH 02/10] sysfs: Support for preventing unmounts Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:16 ` [PATCH 03/10] sysfs: sysfs_get_dentry add a sb parameter Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:18 ` [PATCH 04/10] sysfs: Implement __sysfs_get_dentry Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:23 ` [PATCH 05/10] sysfs: Rename Support multiple superblocks Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:25 ` [PATCH 06/10] sysfs: sysfs_chmod_file handle " Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:28 ` [PATCH 07/10] sysfs: Implement sysfs tagged directory support Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:30 ` [PATCH 08/10] sysfs: Implement sysfs_delete_link and sysfs_rename_link Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:33 ` [PATCH 09/10] driver core: Implement tagged directory support for device classes Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 9:35 ` [PATCH 10/10] net: Enable tagging for net_class directories in sysfs Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 13:10 ` namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL" Mark Lord
2007-12-01 13:13 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-01 19:17 ` Stephen Hemminger
2007-12-01 19:23 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-01 19:38 ` Stephen Hemminger
2007-12-01 19:45 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-01 20:13 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 20:21 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-01 20:29 ` Arjan van de Ven
2007-12-01 22:12 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-01 23:13 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 23:24 ` Jiri Slaby
2007-12-02 1:14 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 23:51 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-02 1:08 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 20:52 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-01 22:13 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-03 0:02 ` David Schwartz
2007-12-03 0:14 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-01 19:54 ` Eric W. Biederman [this message]
2007-12-02 0:30 ` Stephen Hemminger
2007-12-02 2:02 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-02 3:34 ` Mark Lord
2007-12-02 4:23 ` Stephen Hemminger
2007-12-02 19:28 ` Ben Greear
2007-12-02 20:03 ` Patrick McHardy
2007-12-02 20:43 ` Adrian Bunk
2007-12-02 21:59 ` Patrick McHardy
2007-12-03 1:14 ` Adrian Bunk
2007-12-03 8:33 ` Denis V. Lunev
2007-12-03 17:35 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-03 18:19 ` Ben Greear
2007-12-03 18:57 ` Daniel Lezcano
2007-12-04 15:19 ` Daniel Lezcano
2007-12-04 18:03 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-04 18:44 ` Ben Greear
2007-12-04 19:17 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-04 19:35 ` Ben Greear
2007-12-04 20:09 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-05 6:14 ` David Miller
2007-12-05 6:01 ` David Miller
2007-12-04 17:59 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-04 18:57 ` Ben Greear
2007-12-04 20:01 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-05 6:07 ` David Miller
2007-12-03 8:24 ` Romano Giannetti
2007-12-03 15:34 ` Arjan van de Ven
2007-12-03 18:03 ` Eric W. Biederman
2007-12-03 18:13 ` David Miller
2007-12-02 13:51 ` Alan Cox
2007-12-02 19:56 ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2007-12-21 3:07 ` [PATCH 0/10] sysfs network namespace support Greg KH
2007-12-21 13:04 ` Eric W. Biederman
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=m1bq9a5gxf.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com \
--to=ebiederm@xmission.com \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=containers@lists.osdl.org \
--cc=cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com \
--cc=davem@davemloft.net \
--cc=greg@kroah.com \
--cc=gregkh@suse.de \
--cc=herbert@gondor.apana.org.au \
--cc=htejun@gmail.com \
--cc=kay.sievers@vrfy.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=lkml@rtr.ca \
--cc=netdev@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=shemminger@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=stern@rowland.harvard.edu \
--cc=torvalds@linux-foundation.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).