netdev - Re: namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL"

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Date:	Sat, 1 Dec 2007 11:17:36 -0800
From:	Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Mark Lord <lkml@....ca>
Cc:	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...e.de>, Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>,
	Tejun Heo <htejun@...il.com>,
	Linux Containers <containers@...ts.osdl.org>,
	netdev@...r.kernel.org, cornelia.huck@...ibm.com,
	stern@...land.harvard.edu, kay.sievers@...y.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: namespace support requires network modules to say "GPL"

On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:10:17 -0500
Mark Lord <lkml@....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().
> 

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 <shemminger@...ux-foundation.org>
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