[3.8.y.z extended stable] Patch "staging: speakup: Prefix externally-visible symbols" has been added to staging queue

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:48:12AM -0700, Kamal Mostafa wrote:
> This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled
> 
>     staging: speakup: Prefix externally-visible symbols
> 
> to the linux-3.8.y-queue branch of the 3.8.y.z extended stable tree 
> which can be found at:
> 
>  http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.8.y-queue
> 
> This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.8.13.21.
> 
> If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
> reply to this email.
> 
> For more information about the 3.8.y.z tree, see
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable
> 
> Thanks.
> -Kamal
> 
> ------
> 
> >From f9bf384cc96218b4c93ccbabbd1e15e63e8ffb6c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault at ens-lyon.org>
> Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 02:37:40 +0100
> Subject: staging: speakup: Prefix externally-visible symbols
> 
> commit ca2beaf84d9678c12b17d92623f0e90829d6ca13 upstream.
> 
> This prefixes all externally-visible symbols of speakup with "spk_".
> 
> Signed-off-by: Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault at ens-lyon.org>
> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org>
> [ kamal: 3.8-stable prereq to avoid namespace collision (e.g. set_mask_bits) ]
> Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>

Why is this a stable patch?  Why is it needed?  What other code is
breaking without it?

greg k-h