linux-kernel - Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

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Message-Id: <20061025205923.828c620d.akpm@osdl.org>
Date:	Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:59:23 -0700
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>
To:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc:	proski@....org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

> On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:30:26 +0100 Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> Ar Mer, 2006-10-25 am 16:11 -0400, ysgrifennodd Pavel Roskin:
> > I don't see any legal reasons behind this restriction.  A driver under
> > GPL should be able to use any exported symbols.  EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is a
> > technical mechanism of enforcing GPL against non-free code, but
> > ndiswrapper is free.  The non-free NDIS drivers are not using those
> > symbols.
> 
> The combination of GPL wrapper and the NDIS driver as a work is not free
> (in fact its questionable if its even legal to ship such a combination
> together).

May be so.  But this patch was supposed to print a helpful taint message to
draw our attention to the fact that ndis-wrapper was in use.  The patch was
not intended to cause gpl'ed modules to stop loading (or if is was, that
effect was concealed from yours truly).

IOW, this was a mistake.

Now, if we do want to disallow gpl module loading after ndis-wrapper has
been used then fine, we can discuss that.  If we decide to proceed that way
then we will probably cause a load of ndis-wrapper to emit a scary printk for
six months or so to give people time to make arrangements.
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