* Greg Boyce <gboyce@rakis.net> on Thu, Oct 18, 2001:
>
> However, with the addition of GPL only symbols, you add motivation for
> conning. Not by end users, but by the developers of binary only
> modules. If they export the GPL license symbol, they gain access to
> kernel symbols that they may want to use. Since no code is actually being
> stolen, would this kind of trick actually cause a licensing violation?
>
Yeah, but the GPL requires availability of source, so I don't see how they
could get around that (it would no longer be a closed-source module and might
as well be GPL'd).
Hmm, does MODULE_LICENSE() actually state that the module is covered under
the GPL? If not, could something like this work?
--- module.h.orig Thu Oct 18 10:56:09 2001
+++ module.h Thu Oct 18 10:58:43 2001
@@ -286,7 +286,11 @@
#define MODULE_LICENSE(license) \
static const char __module_license[] __attribute__((section(".modinfo"))) = \
-"license=" license
+"license=" license; \
+static const char __module_license_blurb[] __attribute__((section(".modinfo"))) = \
+"license_blurb=This module is covered under the GPL v2 or any later version. " \
+"Please see the file COPYING in the toplevel directory of the source archive " \
+"of this module."
/* Define the module variable, and usage macros. */
extern struct module __this_module;
Of course this can still be circumvented by removing that string from
include/linux/module.h, but you'd still be able to identify renegade
modules, since they perpetrate as GPL'd modules.
M. R.
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