Re: [PATCH 00/13] [RFC] Rust support

[Mariusz Ceier]

On 29/04/2021, Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 02:06:12PM +0000, Mariusz Ceier wrote:
>
>> > You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or
>> > in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, *to
>> > be licensed as a whole* at no charge to all third parties under the
>> > terms of this License.
>>
>>
>> The issue here is, non-GPL tools enable development and distribution
>> of GPL-compatible yet proprietary versions of the kernel, unless I'm
>> mistaken.
>
> And?  For your argument to work, we'd need to have the kernel somehow
> locked into the use of tools that would have no non-GPL equivalents
> *and* would be (somehow) protected from getting such equivalents.
> How could that be done, anyway?  Undocumented and rapidly changing
> features of the tools?  We would get screwed by those changes ourselves.
> Copyrights on interfaces?  Software patents?  Some other foulness?
>
> I honestly wonder about the mental contortions needed to describe
> something of that sort as "free", but fortunately we are nowhere
> near such situation anyway.
>

Equivalents are not a problem - they can exist as long as the
distributed source would be buildable with GPL tools. I was thinking
that adding a requirement that the distributed kernel source should be
buildable by GPL tools would be enough to protect it from proprietary
extensions. But maybe you're right that this is unrealistic.

> I don't like Rust as a language and I'm sceptical about its usefulness
> in the kernel, but let's not bring "gcc is better 'cuz GPL" crusades
> into that - they are irrelevant anyway, since we demonstrably *not*
> locked into gcc on all architectures your hypothetical company would
> care about, Rust or no Rust.
>

I don't mind the language. I'm more concerned about featureful rust
compiler suddenly being developed behind closed doors.