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

[Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>]

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.)