Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 17:13:35 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 17:13:23 -0400 Received: from lightning.swansea.linux.org.uk ([194.168.151.1]:11276 "EHLO the-village.bc.nu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 10 Oct 2001 17:13:13 -0400 Subject: Re: Tainted Modules Help Notices To: tkhoadfdsaf@hotmail.com (Concerned Programmer) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 22:17:22 +0100 (BST) Cc: dwmw2@infradead.org (David Woodhouse), alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox), viro@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro), kaos@ocs.com.au (Keith Owens), sirmorcant@morcant.org (Morgan Collins [Ax0n]), linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: from "Concerned Programmer" at Oct 10, 2001 04:06:42 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: From: Alan Cox Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > had read that it was suppose to be for maintainability (.i.e. source > available so kernel gods can debug) and not to enforce ideological > conformity. Now I read that anything not licensed under the GPL, including > BSD or simply public domain source code, will taint my kernel and modprobe > complains about non-GPL stuff including parport_pc which apparently did not > have a license. Should I expect a Linux kernel KGB to show up next? Hardly. Its there to handle maintainability issues. Right now its got some glitches - and the BSD one is a glitch we need to sort out. Clearly BSD stuff where the source is in the kernel is not harming anyones ability to deubg. > Furthermore I have to agree with the previous poster. Any module could > easily lie to MODULE_LICENSE about its licensing terms and that would not > make it's source automatically "free" and GPLable so I am now wondering if > this tainting mechanism is of any use at all. Well under the DMCA thats probably a criminal offence with five years in jail. The truth however is that if you want to lie about licensing or run a modutils that doesn't do it nobody stops you. Its there primarily to deal with bug filtering from people who don't know better. Folks who know enough to subvert the mechanism generally also know better than to post Nvdriver bugs to l/k. - 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/