From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265099AbUETOEP (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 May 2004 10:04:15 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265115AbUETOEP (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 May 2004 10:04:15 -0400 Received: from mion.elka.pw.edu.pl ([194.29.160.35]:64130 "EHLO mion.elka.pw.edu.pl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265099AbUETOEK (ORCPT ); Thu, 20 May 2004 10:04:10 -0400 From: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz To: "Jinu M." , Subject: Re: protecting source code in 2.6 Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 16:05:34 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.3 Cc: , "Surendra I." References: <1118873EE1755348B4812EA29C55A97222FD0D@esnmail.esntechnologies.co.in> In-Reply-To: <1118873EE1755348B4812EA29C55A97222FD0D@esnmail.esntechnologies.co.in> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200405201605.34100.bzolnier@elka.pw.edu.pl> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thursday 20 of May 2004 15:18, Jinu M. wrote: > Hi All, Hi, > We are developing a block device driver on linux-2.6.x kernel. We want > to distribute our driver as sum of source code and librabry/object code. > > We have divided the source code into two parts. The os interface module > and the device interface module. The os interface module (osint.c) has > all the os interface functions (init, exit, open, close, ioctl, request > queue handling etc). The device interface module (devint.c) on the other > hand has all the device interface functions (initialize device, read, > write etc), these don't use system calls or kernel APIs. > > The device interface module is proprietary source and we don't intend > to distribute it with source code on GPL license. You may want to reconsider your decision. - by providing non-GPL driver your driver is very likely to not work with future kernel versions due to the fact that Linux driver API is not stable (it changes *very* frequently) - nobody is going to provide support for kernels with your driver loaded - you have to deal with bugreports about *all* Linux kernel issues from users of your driver > What we intend to do is, distribute the os interface module (osint.c) > with > source code and the device interface module as object code or library. > The > user will compile the os interface module on the target box and link it > with the device interface module to generate the .ko (loadable module). > > We are not very sure of how to achieve this. > Please help us address this issue. Please be aware of the fact that without 'giving source back' nobody is going to help you on kernel issues here. Kind regards, Bartlomiej > Thanks in advance, > -Jinu