Of the 9 commits listed there, 2 are removing LGPL headers, 2 are adding LGPL headers to scripts which aren't linked into the kernel, 1 is relicensing a header

Of the 9 commits listed there, 2 are removing LGPL headers, 2 are adding LGPL headers to scripts which aren't linked into the kernel, 1 is relicensing a header file so it can be used outside the kernel, 1 is changing from linking against an external GPL3 library to an LGPL2 library without changing the licence of the tool that's in the kernel tree, 1 is an author noting that he's bringing in some external LGPL code which he wrote and is relicensing, 1 is a commit removing a driver and noting that an LGPLed userspace replacement exists, and 1 is noting an external LGPL userspace tool in the MAINTAINERS file. So of all of those, literally 1 is changing the licence to LGPL. A better search is https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22Lesser+General+Public+License%22 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%2..., which reveals 147 results in the code. This is still tiny, given that the kernel is a ~20 million LOC codebase, so yes, I would call LGPL code in the kernel an unusual thing.