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

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Message-ID: <20090218180232.GA21389@Krystal>
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
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