From d8c949c577b5adb9fb87923b5429767aae4be590 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Uwe Kleine-König Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:38:41 +0100 Subject: docs/licensing: Clarify wording about "GPL" and "Proprietary" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit There are currently some doubts about out-of-tree kernel modules licensed under GPLv3 and if they are supposed to be able to use symbols exported using EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. Clarify that "Proprietary" means anything non-GPL2 even though the license might be an open source license. Also disambiguate "GPL compatible" to "GPLv2 compatible". Signed-off-by: Uwe Kleine-König Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241115103842.585207-2-ukleinek@kernel.org --- Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'Documentation/kernel-hacking') diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst b/Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst index 1717348a4404..0042776a9e17 100644 --- a/Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst +++ b/Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst @@ -587,7 +587,7 @@ Defined in ``include/linux/export.h`` Similar to :c:func:`EXPORT_SYMBOL()` except that the symbols exported by :c:func:`EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL()` can only be seen by -modules with a :c:func:`MODULE_LICENSE()` that specifies a GPL +modules with a :c:func:`MODULE_LICENSE()` that specifies a GPLv2 compatible license. It implies that the function is considered an internal implementation issue, and not really an interface. Some maintainers and developers may however require EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() -- cgit v1.2.3-59-g8ed1b