Josh Boyer wrote:

It is not, in my opinion, about what is technically possible and what
isn't.  The kernel is licensed under the GPL.  This is a Linux kernel
only symbol.  One would be hard pressed to claim they have a driver
that wasn't written for Linux that happens to need that symbol.  As a
member of the Linux kernel community, I find it important to encourage
the contribution of code back to the kernel, and this is one way to
help that.  This isn't BSD.

Fine, but this goes back to my original question -- if this is how the 
community feels, then why hasn't someone posted a patch that converts all 
EXPORT_SYMBOL into EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL?

Either we allow non-GPL drivers, or we don't.  If we don't, then we need to 
eliminate EXPORT_SYMBOL once and for all.  Otherwise, the message is 
hypocritical.


-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux kernel developer