Looking forward to 2.6.18 [LWN.net]

Looking forward to 2.6.18

Posted Jul 8, 2006 8:20 UTC (Sat) by dale77 (subscriber, #1490)
Parent article: Looking forward to 2.6.18

"The read-copy-update API is now accessible only to GPL-licensed modules.
The deprecated function synchronize_kernel() has also been removed."

What is this about? Why only allow code with a certain licence to access a
certain API?

Just curious, but it sounds a bit puritanical to me. Is there a good
practical reason?

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Looking forward to 2.6.18

Posted Jul 8, 2006 20:48 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

The RCU code has apparently IBM patents which are licensed to be compatible under GPL only. Code licensed under other license would violate the patents. That seems a good enough reason to do this.