Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Greg KH
2003-04-24T04:29:11Z

On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 08:59:45PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> Btw, one thing that is clearly _not_ allowed by the GPL is hiding private
> keys in the binary. You can sign the binary that is a result of the build
> process, but you can _not_ make a binary that is aware of certain keys
> without making those keys public - because those keys will obviously have
> been part of the kernel build itself.

The GPL does allow you to embed a public key in the kernel, which could
enforce only executables signed with a private key from being run, or
only signed modules from being loaded. Both of which are things that I
know a lot of people want to do (and I've done in the past, see
http://linuxusb.bkbits.net:8080/cryptomark-2.4 for the 2.4 version of a
signed binaries are only allowed to run patch.)

I know a lot of people can (and do) object to such a potential use of
Linux, and I'm glad to see you explicitly state that this is an
acceptable use, it helps to clear up the issue.

thanks,

greg k-h