Re: [PATCH] powerpc: non-GPL export for eeh_dev_check_failure

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt
Date: Sun Aug 10 2014 - 23:17:25 EST


On Tue, 2014-08-05 at 15:51 +0100, One Thousand Gnomes wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Aug 2014 20:12:09 +0530
> Vishal Mansur <vmansur@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > EEH kernel services are inconsistently exported by the
> > kernel. eeh_check_failure is exported for any use, but
> > eeh_dev_check_failure is exported only for GPL use.
> > While eeh_check_failure is implemented for a specific
> > purpose to be used by services such as readl, it is
> > not suited for a purpose where caller needs eeh status.
> > This functionality is provided by eeh_dev_check_failure.
> >
> > This patch relaxes the export for eeh_dev_check_failure
> > to make it consistent with eeh_check_failure() and
> > usable by non-GPL modules.
>
> The GPL covers all derivative works. Tweaking this doesn't magically
> allow you to use the feature in non GPL code. Your legal department can I
> am sure explain in detail further.

This is an interesting case... I assume this has to do with a well known
GPU manufacturer...

The PCI APIs are generally exported in such a way that a non-GPL driver
can use them (regardless of whether one considers a non-GPL driver to be
legal here or not, this is besides the point).

eeh_dev_check_failure() can be considered as powerpc specific extension
of the PCI API for use by PCI drivers and as such, it *could* be
construed that we should be consistent (and consistent with
eeh_check_failure()) and expose it as an EXPORT_SYMBOL without the GPL
suffix.

So I'm somewhat tempted to take this patch, but Vishal, the driver in
question could, I suppose, as a workaround, use a readl to some scratch
register of some description, no ?

Cheers,
Ben.

> Alan
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/


--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/