Re: [PATCH 2.5.5] do export vmalloc_to_page to modules...

Alexander Viro (viro@math.psu.edu)
Wed, 3 Apr 2002 14:19:11 -0500 (EST)


On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Alan Cox wrote:

> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(vfree);
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(__vmalloc);
> > -EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(vmalloc_to_page);
> > +EXPORT_SYMBOL(vmalloc_to_page);
>
> The authors of that code made it GPL. You have no right to change that. Its
> exactly the same as someone taking all your code and making it binary only.
>
> You are
> - subverting a digital rights management system
> [5 years jail in the USA]
> - breaking a license
>
> but worse than that you are ignoring the basic moral rights of the authors
> of that code.

Alan, that's crap. The function in question can be trivially turned into
extern inline and removed from export list completely. _If_ such change
can be made illegal by exporting uninligned version with EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
- I'm going to fork the tree *now* and start replacing the stuff exported
that way with untainted clean reimplementations. As much as I despise
binary-only modules, any mechanism that allows games of that kind needs
to be killed. One shouldn't be able to prohibit equivalent transformations
of core code (and inlining a function _is_ such transformation) by pulling
the licensing crap.

-
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