Subject: Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Giridhar Pemmasani <pgiri@yahoo.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <20061024024347.57840.qmail@web32414.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <20061024024347.57840.qmail@web32414.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:07:10 +0100
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Ar Llu, 2006-10-23 am 19:43 -0700, ysgrifennodd Giridhar Pemmasani:
> I was not fully aware of this issue until now (I have read posts related to
> this issue now). Does this mean that any module that loads binary code can't
> be GPL, even those that load firmware files? How is

Firmware is usually more clearly separated (the problem ultimately is
that "derived work" is a legal not a technical distinction).

> non-GPL-due-to-transitivity going to be checked? Why does module loader mark
> only couple of modules as non-GPL, when there are other drivers that load
> some sort of binary code? It is understandable to mark a module as non-GPL if
> it is lying about its license, but as far as that is concerned, ndiswrapper
> (alone) is GPL.

Yes. I don't think the current situation is neccessarily correct, but if
it uses EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL then the "now taint me" ought to fail and the
driver ought to refuse to load a non GPL windows driver.

Alan

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