Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

Zan Lynx
2006-10-23T18:36:25Z

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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 <zlynx@acm.org>

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