Does something prevent distributing the patches?

Posted May 5, 2017 14:44 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: Does something prevent distributing the patches? by SLi
Parent article: Grsecurity goes private

It seems to me they are focusing on RAP now, which is a gcc plugin and not a kernel patch, and they do not need RAP to be under the GPL because the kernel is not linked to the gcc runtime.
That is how I understand the FAQ anyway.

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Does something prevent distributing the patches?

Posted May 5, 2017 18:55 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

Maybe I'm not understanding what people mean by "GCC plugin", but as I understand it any GCC plugin has to be released under a GPL-compatible license... that was the entire reason why plugins took so long to be available in GCC.

So I don't see how using a GCC plugin allows escape from the GPL. You've only switched copyright holders from the Linux kernel community to the Free Software Foundation (sole copyright holders on GCC).

Now, if/when the kernel is able to be compiled with LLVM/Clang then certain completely proprietary plugins for that compiler can be made available under essentially any license.