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

Martin J. Bligh
2004-05-01T20:48:10Z

>>> All bugs can be debugged or fixed, it's a matter of how hard it is
>>> to do (generally easier with open-source) and *who* is responsible
>>> for doing it (i.e. supporting the modules).
>>
>> Yes, exactly. The tainted mechanism is there to tell us that it's not
>> *our* problem to support it. And you deliberately screwed that up,
>> which is why everybody is pissed at you.
>
> It was already screwed up, and causing unnecessary support burdens
> both on the community ("help! what does tainted mean") and vendors.
> This thread and previous ones have shown ample evidence of that.
> Let's deal with the root problem and fix the messages, as Rik van Riel
> has suggested.
>
> Most third-party module suppliers have been confronted with the same issue
> and forced to work around it (in other imperfect and sometimes clumsy ways).

Odd that none of them just submitted a patch to fix the "real problem" then.
Sorry, I don't believe that was your only intent.

> One of them redirects the messages to a separate file and appends
> the following notice:
>
> > ********************************************************************
> > * You can safely ignore the above message about tainting the kernel.
> > * It is completely political and means just that the maintainers of
> > * of modutils package dislike software that is not distributed under
> > * an open source license.
> > ********************************************************************

Which is bullshit - It's not political, it's a matter of support. Problems
that appeared to be VM issues, or other things, turned out to be binary
driver issues, which we can't fix, and is a total waste of our time.
Whether you agree with what we chose to support or not is completely
immaterial - it's not your call.

M.