Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265229AbUD3TUo (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 15:20:44 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265231AbUD3TUn (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 15:20:43 -0400 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:31946 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265229AbUD3TUl (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 15:20:41 -0400 Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:19:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Hua Zhong cc: "'Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz'" , "'Peter Williams'" , "'Marc Boucher'" , "'Sean Estabrooks'" , "'Paul Wagland'" , "'Rik van Riel'" , "'Timothy Miller'" , koke@sindominio.net, "'Rusty Russell'" , "'lkml - Kernel Mailing List'" , "'David Gibson'" Subject: RE: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license In-Reply-To: <009701c42edf$25e47390$ca41cb3f@amer.cisco.com> Message-ID: References: <009701c42edf$25e47390$ca41cb3f@amer.cisco.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2100 Lines: 47 On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Hua Zhong wrote: > > I have not heard so much WINING about WINE. I even see kernel developers add > more support in the kernel to support WINE. Why do people like to pick on > closed-source drivers being run by a wrapper? I see nothing wrong with that. What is so hard to understand about the problem with bugs? All software has bugs. Binary modules just mean that those bugs are - FATAL to the system, including possibly being a huge security hole. - impossible to debug - impossible to fix In contrast, wine was _written_ to do this emulation, so by definition any "bugs" are in wine itself (although I suspect that wine people sometimes would prefer it if Office came with sources ;). > Linuxant did a wrong thing by working around the warning message, but I > don't think it's fair to accuse of their business because they allow binary > drivers run on Linux. Nobody has sued them over copyright infringement. What they are doing is likely legal - APART from the fact that they lied about the license, which is not only horribly immoral, it's also likely illegal under the DMCA. Note: to me, the immoral part is the big one. If you want to flaunt the DMCA and take the risk of the feds coming after you as a matter of civil disobedience, all the more power to you. Let's not be hypocritical and claim to like the DMCA. But let's not kid about this: adding that '\0' thing to try to make the kernel believe it was GPL'd code is not ethical, and there is no way to claim that it's needed, since the _only_ thing it suppresses are a few messages saying that the kernel is tainted as a result. Which it IS. So don't bother trying to stand up for Linuxant. What they did was WRONG, and there are no excuses for it. And I hope that they have it fixed already and we can hereby just forget about this discussion. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/