Re: policy on GPL'd drivers?

>>> The only true solution to this is to version the APIs in the kernel 
>>> and
>>> use the module versioning hooks to not load modules if the version
>>> isn't
>>> the right one.
>>
>> Will this require *any* new infrastructure to implement properly?  Or 
>> is
>> it simply a matter of maintaining API metadata regarding versions.
>
> I think it'd just be a question of maintaining the metadata. There may
> be a little code missing but I don't think it would take a lot of work
> to complete the versioning mechanism. Creating all the metadata to
> actually define and version the APIs is another issue entirely though.
>
> Each module can maintain dependency data, stating which versions of
> other modules it can work with. The kernel would need to create virtual
> modules that held the faked module version for that API component. That
> wouldn't be very hard, just a linker set to record the API version in a
> module version structure. Ideally, whenever possible each API component
> should be grouped into a module anyway, but when that isn't possible
> just defining a faked module version should work.
>

So the module dependency graph would have "nodes" that are either
real or virtual modules.  Virtual modules are provided by the kernel
proper only which only uses them to satisfy a module dependency?

Interesting [hope I got that correct :)]

Sounds like a neat way to create a module framework, guide for
3rd party and commercial drivers to get support from FreeBSD itself.

dave