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

Tim Hockin
2004-04-29T22:33:20Z

On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 06:24:58PM -0400, Marc Boucher wrote:
> The inherent instability of binary modules is a religious myth. Any

No, it's REAL, unless VERY CAREFULLY handled. If your binary uses a
spinlock, it either works only on SMP or only on UP. If your binary uses
any number of kernel structures and interfaces, you are subject to the
whims of whomever compiled the kernel. spinlock debuging changes the
sizeof(spinlock_t). Some APIs become macros or inlines depending on
config options.

You have to toally separate all the kernel code from the binary code. If
you can't do that, you end up with a kernel module that works ONLY on a
very small subset of kernels. And that sucks. We don't want to encourage
that. If your driver manages to cleanly pull out all the binary gunk from
the kernel gunk, then kudos to you.

I still don't like it, but at least it has a chance of running.