Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932222AbWJZTTE (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:19:04 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932274AbWJZTTE (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:19:04 -0400 Received: from c60.cesmail.net ([216.154.195.49]:27183 "EHLO c60.cesmail.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932222AbWJZTTC (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:19:02 -0400 Subject: Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper From: Pavel Roskin To: Alan Cox Cc: Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <1161859199.12781.7.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <1161807069.3441.33.camel@dv> <1161808227.7615.0.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20061025205923.828c620d.akpm@osdl.org> <1161859199.12781.7.camel@localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:19:00 -0400 Message-Id: <1161890340.9087.28.camel@dv> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.8.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1457 Lines: 35 On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 11:39 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Really ndiswrapper shouldn't be using _GPLONLY symbols, that would > actually make it useful to the binary driver afflicted again and more > likely to be legal. usb_register_driver is using EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL_FUTURE, which means all USB drivers will have to be GPL soon. This would disable the USB support in ndiswrapper. There is no other way to register USB drivers. Apparently, the USB developers feel that every Linux USB driver should be considered a derived work of Linux, and therefore should be under GPL. This means that ndiswrapper would be considered as a derived work of Linux. Since ndiswrapper is under GPL, it would suffer unfairly if the meaning of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is extended to restrict GPLed modules capable of loading proprietary code into the kernel. The second problem is sysfs. Again, using sysfs is only allowed to GPLed modules for the same reason. Although ndiswrapper is not using sysfs now, it would be unfair to restrict it from doing that in the future. It's not like the proprietary modules would be using Linux USB or sysfs API - they are unaware of Linux. Only the free code can use it. -- Regards, Pavel Roskin - 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/