GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper & GPLv3

GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper & GPLv3

Posted Oct 29, 2006 17:47 UTC (Sun) by malor (subscriber, #2973)
In reply to: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper & GPLv3 by mingo
Parent article: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

Oh for chrissake, you're splitting hairs.

The kernel devs were trying to make it difficult for you to run code they don't like. They've changed their minds subsequently, but they had decreed that ndiswrapper was Not Acceptable Code as written, and wrote a specific blockage of that code into the kernel. By name, even.

They were using, in other words, code to enforce a political viewpoint...and an INCORRECT political viewpoint at that, since ndiswrapper doesn't violate the GPL.

This is entirely different from code that controls behavior because of technical reasons, and you know that perfectly well. They were trying to limit end users from running *specific code*. They weren't saying "nobody can do X because it will break systems", they were saying "We don't like ndiswrapper and you can't use it anymore."

The fact that we can hack around their edict is irrelevant. We shouldn't have to.

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