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

Timothy Miller
2004-04-29T21:34:03Z

Paul Wagland wrote:
>
> On Apr 29, 2004, at 17:14, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 29 Apr 2004, Timothy Miller wrote:
>>
>>>> "Due to $MOD_FOO's license ($BLAH), the Linux kernel community
>>>> cannot resolve problems you may encounter. Please contact
>>>> $MODULE_VENDOR for support issues."
>>>
>>>
>>> Sounds very "politically correct", but certainly more descriptive and
>>> less alarming.
>>
>>
>> More importantly, it directs the support burden to where
>> it, IMHO, belongs.
>
>
> Just to throw in my two cents at the end of this long debate... :-)
>
> I heartily endorse (for what little that is worth ;-) the change in
> text. It adds clarity, it provides more information as to where to go
> for information. It is hard to misconstrue as a message of impending
> doom, consider that a good synonym for tainted is corrupted, and a
> corrupted kernel is a bad thing :-).
>
> Cheers,
> Paul

While we're on all of this, are we going to change "tained" to some
other less alarmist word? Say there is a /proc file or some report that
you can generate about the kernel that simply wants to indicate that the
kernel contains closed-source modules, and we want to use a short,
concise word like "tainted" for this. "An untrusted module has been
loaded into this kernel" would be just a bit too long to qualify.

Hmmm... how about "untrusted"? Not sure...