Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

Andrew Morton
2006-10-26T03:59:28Z

> On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:30:26 +0100 Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.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.