> Can someone explain the purpose of GPL only symbols to me The official explanation, AFAIK, is that modules using symbols marked as GPL-only are so tied to ke

> Can someone explain the purpose of GPL only symbols to me The official explanation, AFAIK, is that modules using symbols marked as GPL-only are so tied to kernel internal details that they can only be considered as a derivative work of the kernel. > and why existing long standing APIs keep getting changed to GPL only? If you accept the explanation above, the simplest to understand reason would be that they not being marked as GPL-only was a mistake. That is: modules using these symbols would already have been a derivative work of the kernel, it's just that the developer wasn't being warned of that before. The fact that GPL-only symbols are a new thing (originally, there was only EXPORT_SYMBOL, the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL machinery was only added much later) increases the chances of that happening, since older symbols might not have been marked correctly yet.