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

Timothy Miller
2004-04-29T20:20:24Z

Giuliano Colla wrote:

> As an end user, if I buy a full fledged modem, I get some amount of
> proprietary, non GPL, code which executes within the board or the
> PCMCIA card of the modem. The GPL driver may even support the
> functionality of downloading a new version of *proprietary* code into
> the flash Eprom of the device. The GPL linux driver interfaces with it,
> and all is kosher.
> On the other hand, I have the misfortune of being stuck with a
> soft-modem, roughly the *same* proprietary code is provided as a binary
> file, and a linux driver (source provided) interfaces with it. In that
> case the kernel is flagged as "tainted".
>
> But in both cases, if the driver is poorly written, because of
> developer's inadequacy, or because of the proprietary code being poorly
> documented and/or implemented, my kernel may go nuts, be it tainted or not.
>
> Can you honestly tell apart the two cases, if you don't make a it a case
> of "religion war"?
>

Firmware downloaded into a piece of hardware can't corrupt the kernel in
the host.

(Unless it's a bus master which writes to random memory, which might be
possible, but there is hardware you can buy to watch PCI transactions.)