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Subject: Re: spinlocks, the GPL, and binary-only modules
From: Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr>
To: Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>,
       David McIlwraith <quack@bigpond.net.au>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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Le mer 20/11/2002 ?  09:12, Mark Mielke a écrit? :
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 01:06:39AM -0200, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, David McIlwraith wrote:
> > > How should it? The compiler (specifically, the C preprocessor) includes
> > > the code, thus it is not the AUTHOR violating the GPL.
> > If the compiler includes a .h file, it happens because
> > the programmer told it to do so, using a #include.
> 
> I was recently re-reading the GPL and I came to the following conclusion:
> 
> The GPL is only an issue if the software is *distributed* with GPL
> software. Meaning -- it is not legal to distribute a linux kernel that

Yeah, that's precisely the problem here: the binary-only module is
distributed with included spinlock code, which *is* GPL.

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