Re: Please open sysfs symbols to proprietary modules

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 17:13 -0600, parker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Feb 2005 09:41:00 +0100, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 17:56 -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > > Hello!
> > >
> > > I'm writing a module under a proprietary license.  I decided to use sysfs
> > > to do the configuration.  Unfortunately, all sysfs exports are available
> > > to GPL modules only because they are exported by EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.
> > 
> > I suggest you talk to a lawyer and review the general comments about
> > binary modules with him (http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/COPYING.modules
> > for example). You are writing an addition to linux from scratch, and it
> > is generally not considered OK to do that in binary form (I certainly do
> > not consider it OK).
> 
> So what about companies like ImageStream who write proprietary Linux network
> drivers for their hardware from scratch with no previous ports from another OS?

Note that "has a previous port" is not enough for me to consider a
proprietary driver "ok". 

Anyway you asked... if your description is accurate then yes I consider
those modules (if they are distributed of course) a violation of the
license of the code I contributed to the kernel.


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