[U-Boot] exports.h and the GPL

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Michael Walle,

In message <201202242048.51624.michael at walle.cc> you wrote:
>
> > which is why the exported funcs are "high level" and not ones that get into
> > low level stuff that would necessitate passing structs.  the other problem
> > with struct passing is that they tend to break the ABI layer.
> > -mike
> 
> Then i guess there is no way to support a board which has only evil closed 
> source drivers for its networking card. That is, i can't export eth_register() 
> to register my ops defined in the blob without violating the GPL.

As Mike already explained, this is correct.  And it is intentional.

> Even if the headers for the "struct eth_device" were public domain, this 
> mechanism would be sth like 'linking' against the uboot, wouldn't it?

Yes, indeed.

You are not supposed to mix closed-source drivers with GPL code.  The
best approach is probably to re-write the drivers under GPL.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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