From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:21:53 -0800 From: "Paul E. McKenney" Subject: Re: Non-GPL export of invalidate_mmap_range Message-ID: <20040218162153.GF1269@us.ibm.com> Reply-To: paulmck@us.ibm.com References: <20040217073522.A25921@infradead.org> <20040217124001.GA1267@us.ibm.com> <20040217161929.7e6b2a61.akpm@osdl.org> <1077108694.4479.4.camel@laptop.fenrus.com> <20040218140021.GB1269@us.ibm.com> <20040218211035.A13866@infradead.org> <20040218150607.GE1269@us.ibm.com> <20040218222138.A14585@infradead.org> <20040218145132.460214b5.akpm@osdl.org> <20040218230055.A14889@infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040218230055.A14889@infradead.org> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Christoph Hellwig , Andrew Morton , tovalds@osdl.org, arjanv@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 11:00:55PM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 02:51:32PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > a) Does the export make technical sense? Do filesystems have > > legitimate need for access to this symbol? > > > > (really, a) is sufficient grounds, but for real-world reasons:) > > > > b) Does the IBM filsystem meet the kernel's licensing requirements? > > > > > > It appears that the answers are a): yes and b) probably. > > Well, the answer to b) is most likely not. I see it very hard to argue to > have something like gpfs not beeing a derived work. The glue code they > had online certainly looked very much like a derived work, and if the new > version got better they wouldn't have any reason to remove it from the > website, right? Nice conspiracy theory! ;-) It was moved to a different website some time ago: http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/cluster/fixes/gpfsfixhome.html The current version is 2.2.0-1. You will get a tar.gz file, and the glue code source will be in gpfs.gpl-2.2.0-1.noarch.rpm after you unpack. Thanx, Paul > > Please, feel free to add additional criteria. We could also ask "do we > > want to withhold this symbols to encourage IBM to GPL the filesystem" or > > "do we simply refuse to export any symbol which is not used by any GPL > > software" (if so, why?). > > Yes. Andrew, please read the GPL, it's very clear about derived works. > Then please tell me why you think gpfs is not a derived work. > > > But at the end of the day, if we decide to not export this symbol, we owe > > Paul a good, solid reason, yes? > > Yes. We've traditionally not exported symbols unless we had an intree user, > and especially not if it's for a module that's not GPL licensed. > > We had this discussion with Linus a few time, maybe he can comment again to > make it clear. > -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: aart@kvack.org