linux-kernel - Moving Userspace RCU (urcu) from GPL to LGPL license

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:02:32 -0500
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <compudj@...stal.dyndns.org>
To:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, ltt-dev@...ts.casi.polymtl.ca,
	pierre-marc.fournier@...ymtl.ca
Subject: Moving Userspace RCU (urcu) from GPL to LGPL license

Hi Paul,

I think that it would be good to distribute the userspace rcu work we
are currently doing (ref. :
http://lttng.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=userspace-rcu.git) as a
LGPL library rather than GPL so it can be linked to the userspace part
of the LTTng tracer. We want to provide this tracer as a LGPL library so
proprietary applications can link to it and therefore be traceable. The
only thing is that we cannot put GPL code into a LGPL library.

The other point is that I use a few low-level primitives from the Linux
kernel header (e.g. atomic increment for x86, barrier macros). Those are
simple one-liners, but, still, I wonder about the licensing
implications. I could simply "rewrite" them, but that would be a shame
to have a different primitive implementation of those simple primitives
in userspace and in kernel-space just for a licensing question. I would
really like to keep the Linux kernel coding-style within this library.
So the question would be : are those headers, distributed with the Linux
kernel, distributed under GPL license ? Is there any special clause that
would permit using their content under LGPL ? If not, would the
community see such use favorably ?

Ideas/comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F  BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/