On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:31:19AM -0800, Jeff Haran wrote:

quoted

That's the actual bug: You assume that you can legally make a
proprietary Linux kernel module by simply declaring to do so (and going
deeper is not quite possible as we do not know the module ....).

I can clearly legally write a user space program that results in calls
to kernel symbols without publishing it. To do that I load parameters
into registers and onto the stack and issue a trap to generate a
system call. A kernel module does almost the same thing, except
instead of generating a trap, it makes a more traditional function
call. The difference is technical and I don't see anything in the
COPYING file that makes any reference to this difference. If I have
missed that verbiage in the license, please point it out to me.

Please read the first paragraph in the COPYING file in the kernel, it
explains the differences and allows for userspace programs to not be
bound under the license of the rest of the kernel.

quoted

But your kernel module is very probably a derived work of the Linux
kernel anyway and thus automatically and implicitly GPL (even if your
whole company may want it, has been told or think otherwise).

"very probably a derived work". That is a big assumption. What in the
license defines all code that makes calls into kernel symbols via the
dynamic module loader mechanism different than code that calls into
that code via a trap?

Again the very license of the kernel itself does that.

greg k-h