Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

Roland Kuhn
2006-10-27T12:52:30Z

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Hi Pavel!

On 27 Oct 2006, at 00:29, Pavel Roskin wrote:

>> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL shows a pretty clear intention, and offering
>> functionality provided throug h EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL'ed symbols to
>> proprietary code sounds very fishy.
>
> Last time I checked, EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL was an indication that a code
> using it will be considered as a work derived from Linux. This way,
> ndiswrapper, which is free software, can be considered a derived work.
>
> NDIS drivers don't know about any Linux API, therefore they cannot use
> it directly. The purpose of ndiswrapper is not to remove limitations
> from the Linux API, but to present a completely different API.
>
Maybe everyone would be more happy if this "completely different API"
would live at lower priviledge level, e.g. ring 1, so it could not
screw up kernel internals? Is this technically possible? Maybe it's
the same thing, but another way could be to run NDIS stuff inside a
xen-like virtual environment... Has anyone tried yet?

Ciao,
Roland

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