[uClinux-dev] FW: insmod fails with Unknown symbol

[Jamie Lokier]

chris brooke wrote:
> Thanks for the prompt response.  This is the first time I've heard of restricte
> d and unrestricted symbols.
> So to implement option 3 (create a GPL-licensed module that uses the GPL-only s
> ymbols and make your
> proprietary driver talk through that module)  I can create a GPL module that se
> rves as a wrapper for the
> restricted symbols.  My driver would use the wrapper functions exported by that
>  module. 
> -- Do I have that right?

Technically that would work, but the GPL-only symbols are a hint that
legally, that might not be allowed.  It depends what your wrapper
module does.

The GPL-only symbols are hint that, in the opinion of kernel
developers, any code which uses them must be so intimately dependent
on the kernel code as to be a derived work of it.  If you produce a
wrapper module, then depending on what the module does, that may apply
to the module which uses the wrapper module, or it may not.  There's
no technical way to discern this, unfortunately; it takes a legal
opinion.

-- Jamie