RE: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license

Linus Torvalds
2004-04-30T19:20:44Z

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Hua Zhong wrote:
>
> I have not heard so much WINING about WINE. I even see kernel developers add
> more support in the kernel to support WINE. Why do people like to pick on
> closed-source drivers being run by a wrapper? I see nothing wrong with that.

What is so hard to understand about the problem with bugs?

All software has bugs. Binary modules just mean that those bugs are
- FATAL to the system, including possibly being a huge security hole.
- impossible to debug
- impossible to fix

In contrast, wine was _written_ to do this emulation, so by definition any
"bugs" are in wine itself (although I suspect that wine people sometimes
would prefer it if Office came with sources ;).

> Linuxant did a wrong thing by working around the warning message, but I
> don't think it's fair to accuse of their business because they allow binary
> drivers run on Linux.

Nobody has sued them over copyright infringement. What they are doing is
likely legal - APART from the fact that they lied about the license, which
is not only horribly immoral, it's also likely illegal under the DMCA.

Note: to me, the immoral part is the big one. If you want to flaunt the
DMCA and take the risk of the feds coming after you as a matter of civil
disobedience, all the more power to you. Let's not be hypocritical and
claim to like the DMCA.

But let's not kid about this: adding that '\0' thing to try to make the
kernel believe it was GPL'd code is not ethical, and there is no way to
claim that it's needed, since the _only_ thing it suppresses are a few
messages saying that the kernel is tainted as a result. Which it IS.

So don't bother trying to stand up for Linuxant. What they did was WRONG,
and there are no excuses for it. And I hope that they have it fixed
already and we can hereby just forget about this discussion.

Linus