Re: [PATCH] splice exports

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 18:14 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jens Axboe wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 31 2006, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >> Jens Axboe wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Mar 31 2006, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 23:06 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >>>>> Woe be unto he who builds their filesystems as modules.
> >>>> since splice support is highly linux specific and new.. shouldn't these
> >>>> be _GPL exports?
> >>> Yes they should, I'll add that to the current splice tree.
> >> Why?  We don't usually restrict filesystems in such ways...  I would 
> >> rather a binary-only module reference generic_file_splice_read() than 
> >> create its own.
> > 
> > You could use that very same argument for any piece of the kernel, then,
> > so I don't think that adds much value to _not_ exporting it GPL.
> 
> Not really, because I'm considering the Real World(tm) users, not 
> abstract theory :)  The other filesystem junk is exported non-GPL, and 
> existing binary-only filesystems use that stuff.
> 
> IOW its a bit rude to say "oh you can have your BO filesystem, just not 
> splice support."


it's a bit like saying "you can use all the standard unix interfaces,
but these are very linux specific"; eg the same arguments for making lsm
and other pieces _GPL; they're so linux specific that users that use
these do so with linux in mind etc