[Plex86-devel] Re: [Bochs-developers] Plex86 lives!!! (as an acceleration for bochs)

[Eric Northup]

On Saturday 28 December 2002 08:10 pm, Kevin Lawton wrote:
> Bochs and Plex86 friends,
>
[snip]
> It works!!!  Just a few days of gutting plex86, a few mods to bochs
> to use the kernel module interface, and now number crunching in
> bochs is faster than it use to be!  :^)

Very exciting!

[snip]
>
> Stuff that hits the OS will still be at bochs performance levels.
> Though, I'm thinking that some of the costs of OS stuff are
> related to disk/video/networking, which can be accelerated
> by special guest-OS-specific device drivers which can kick
> out of bochs-land to be handled at more native performance
> levels, rather than have the guest OS drivers emulated
> at bochs speed.

Folks doing work on micro-kernels will love to hear this: finally a system 
where a pure monolithic kernel is slower ;)

> Couple quick questions:
>
> (1) What license to use?  Plex86 was LGPL.  Linux complains
> "Warning: loading plex86.o will taint the kernel: non-GPL license - LGPL"
> I don't really care any more.  Should we up plex86 to GPL?

I think the solution is along the lines of:

MODULE_LICENSE("GPL")   /* Plex86 is LGPL when not linked with Linux */

modutils also recognizes "GPL with additional rights", I believe (but didn't 
check).

see http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.2/0167.html for Alan 
Cox's answer to this very question (included below).

-Eric



> What should I use for the MODULE_LICENSE() string in a driver
> that is distributed under the LGPL? "LGPL" isn't listed in
> include/linux/module.h as an "untainted" license, so should I

When LGPL code is linked with GPL code then the result becomes GPL. So
once you have the code combined with the kernel it is GPL unless its
a seperate work.

Alan