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Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 12:02:24 -0500
From: Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc>
To: Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>,
       David McIlwraith <quack@bigpond.net.au>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: spinlocks, the GPL, and binary-only modules
Message-ID: <20021121170224.GB5315@mark.mielke.cc>
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On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 05:08:45AM -0800, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> On 21 Nov 2002, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > It is if the AUTHOR then decides to distribute the resulting binary
> > which would contain a mix of GPL and non GPL work..
> The mix is a direct result of developers knowingly inlining critical C
> code into the headers.  If this code was placed in proper .c files and not
> set in a .h then the potential for accidental mixing is removed.
> This would limit and restrict the headers to being structs and extern
> functions to call.

Some (not all) of the inlined functions are 'inline' to accelerate the
kernel.

Perhaps, though, the inlined functions should be declared:

   #ifdef __GNUC__
   #  define INLINE extern inline
   #else
   #  define INLINE inline
   #endif

   #ifdef GPL
   INLINE type function (arguments)
   {
      ...
   }
   #else
   INLINE type function (arguments);
   #endif

This would be neat in that no real additional code would be brought into
the module, however, there is a possibility that the module would run a little
bit slower - a small incentive to GPL the module...

Of course, this would mean that any #define's still sitting around that
contributed code of significance should be replaced with possibly inlined
functions...

Would this make everybody happy?

mark

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