[$] Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line
As a general rule, the kernel community is happy to merge working device
drivers without much concern for the availability of any associated
user-space code. What happens in user space is beyond the kernel's concern
and unaffected by the kernel's license. There is an exception, though, in
the form of drivers for graphical processors (GPUs), which cannot be merged
in the absence of a working, freely-licensed user-space component. The
question of which drivers are subject to that rule has come up a few times
in recent years; that discussion has now come to a decision point with an
effort to block some
Habana Labs driver updates from entry into the 5.15 kernel.