Lyvim Xaphir <knightmerc@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> But that freedom of choice, both by the user and by the owners of
> intellectual property rights, is threatened by a kernel message, inserted
> by Greg KH and Andrew Morton, which says that non-GPL'd licensed drivers
> will be "disallowed" since they are "tainted".
Do you have a link to information about this decision? I haven't heard
about it from anybody other than yourself, and since such a decision would
have quite severe consequences, I would be surprised that I didn't read
about it anywhere else. "Would be" instead of "am" because until you supply
evidence, I think you are wrong.
I know about the taint message, as I see it whenever I look at the dmesg
output (The OpenAFS kernel module is IBM Public License != GPL, and the
nVidia/ATI drivers are also != GPL), but it is simply information, and
does not imply any restrcitions.
> This wasn't a decision that was discussed among the members of the Linux
> community, it's not something that was voted in by several user
> populations of different distros, as a matter of fact there was no
> consultation made to the community at all; it was a decision made behind
> closed doors by two or more developers, ON YOUR BEHALF. In other words,
> you, I, nor nobody else except them had any say in this.
If you are so concerned about this, you can take the kernel and modify it
to still allow non-GPL USB kernel modules. Besides, if you dig a little
deeper before starting to whine, you would find out that the "problem"
probably won't exist when this is implemented.
> greatunwashed: module license 'great_unwashed' taints kernel.
> ich: no version for "unwashed_register_device" found: kernel tainted.
> Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module,
> which will not be allowed in the future
> Please see the file Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
> in the kernel source tree for more details.
I decided to look it up myself.
>From Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt:
What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
When: February 2008
Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
userspace filesystems, please contact the
linux-usb-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailing list, and the developers
there will be glad to help you out.
Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxx>
As you can see, the non-GPL USB drivers will move to userspace instead of
kernelspace. This is thus a technical decision that hopefully will not be
noticed by end users. All your fears should instantaneously evaporate,
since they were all based on flawed assumptions.
I understand perfectly why the kernel developers did this. If there is no
disadvantage of running the drivers in userspace, why insist on keeping
them in the kernel? Closed binary kernel modules are a problem, since they
make debugging much harder or impossible. They should thus be kept out of
the kernel if possible, since it reduces the number of potential
undebuggable kernel systems.
Regards
Ingemar
