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

Timothy Miller
2004-04-27T20:36:24Z

Chris Friesen wrote:
> Marc Boucher wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 27, 2004, at 1:46 PM, Chris Friesen wrote:
>
>
>>> Does your company honestly feel that misleading the module loading
>>> tools is actually the proper way to work around the issue of
>>> repetitive warning messages? This is blatently misleading and does
>>> not reflect well, especially when the "GPL" directory mentioned in
>>> the source string is actually empty.
>>
>>
>>
>> It is a purely technical workaround. There is nothing misleading to
>> the human eye,
>
>
> modinfo reports a GPL license, and the kernel does not report itself as
> tainted. That's misleading.
>
>> and the GPL directory isn't empty; it is included in full in our
>> generic .tar.gz, rpm and
>> .deb packages.
>
>
> My apologies. I was going on the word of the original poster.

Even that is a violation of the GPL. You can't link closed-source code
with GPL code and release it legally.

Binary-only modules are technically a violation of the GPL, but kernel
developers have chosen to allow it under tight constraints.

But the building and releasing ANYTHING which is made up of GPL code and
closed-source code and released as an atomic unit (not merely agregated
on the same medium) is illegal.