On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 11:41 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Ar Sul, 2006-10-22 am 22:41 -0700, ysgrifennodd Giridhar Pemmasani: > > Note that when a driver is loaded, ndiswrapper does taint the kernel (to be > > more accurate, it should check if the driver being loaded is GPL or not, but > > that is not done). > > However by then it has already dynamically linked with explicit GPLONLY > symbols so it cannot then load a binary windows driver but should unload > itself or refuse to load anything but the GPL ndis drivers (of which > afaik only one exists), and even then they expect an environment > incompatible with the Linux kernel. The kernel itself links GPL code to non-GPL via the Posix API (the syscall layer). The kernel also links GPL code to non-GPL via the PCI layer (all that proprietary firmware on the other side). The ndiswrapper links GPL code to non-GPL via the NDIS API. No difference, really. Implementing a well-defined interface abstraction layer doesn't make either side of it derived from the other. (Exactly how well-defined, how abstract, and how derived are all arguments for the lawyers.) -- Zan Lynx