Quotes of the week [LWN.net]

So let's come out and ban binary modules, rather than pussyfooting around, if that's what we actually want to do.

It comes down to a question of whether we have enough leverage to push them into doing what we want, or not - are we prepared to call their bluff?

The current half-assed solution of chipping slowly away at things by making them EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL one by one makes little sense - would be better if we actually made an affirmative decision one way or the other.

-- Martin Bligh

Give people 12 months warning (time to work out what they're going to do, talk with the legal dept, etc) then make the kernel load only GPL-tagged modules.

I think I'd favour that. It would aid those people who are trying to obtain device specs, and who are persuading organisations to GPL their drivers.

-- Andrew Morton

I'll whip up such a patch in a bit to spit out kernel log messages whenever such a module is loaded so that people have some warning.

-- Greg Kroah-Hartman

(Log in to post comments)

Linus not playing ball

Posted Dec 14, 2006 5:27 UTC (Thu) by svrana (subscriber, #20826) [Link]

Don't get in panic mode; read the entire thread and Linus' response. Hint: it starts: "Btw, I really think this is shortsighted."

A cheer is heard, I hear it, it's faint, but I hear it nonetheless-- "long live Linus, long live Linus!"

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 14, 2006 9:46 UTC (Thu) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]

Oh no.

The quote of this week has to be Dave Jones correcting a minor typo in one of our editor's patches, under the subject "Jon needs a new shift key."

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 14, 2006 10:37 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Personally I liked Greg's penguin poem (not really a haiku):

Full bellies of fish
Penguins sleep under the moon
Dream of wings that fly

I expected the un-haiku to have pride of place here too.

Posted Dec 15, 2006 3:43 UTC (Fri) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Maybe the poem, like Linux 2.6.20, just missed the weekly edition.

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 19, 2006 22:12 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link]

Personally I liked Greg's penguin poem (not really a haiku):

      Full bellies of fish
      Penguins sleep under the moon
      Dream of wings that fly

In the spirit of Free/Libre Poetry...some slightly modified wording:

      Bellies full of fish,
      Penguins sleep under the moon
      And dream of flying.

(No clue if that's haiku, either, but it does at least use a 5/7/5 scheme.)

Greg (different one)

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 21, 2006 11:13 UTC (Thu) by hensema (guest, #980) [Link]

I don't like this attitude. The GPL has never been about restricting use, only about restricting distribution.

Now some kernel developers want to restrict usage of the kernel in people's private homes. I bet they must love DRM and the DMCA.

I think only the distribution of binary kernel modules can be restricted. However, that's probably up to a court to judge. I don't know whether there's a precedent on the status of compiling against GPL'ed header files. Is this linking as defined in the GPL or is this just fair use? Or maybe something completely different?

If you can't distribute binary-only code which is linked against GPL'ed kernel headers, then there's a case.

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 25, 2006 4:02 UTC (Mon) by robert_s (guest, #42402) [Link]

Nobody is taking anybody's freedoms away. They can't.

The GPL fundamentally prohibits anyone from removing a user's freedoms.

You are still perfectly free to dig into the source and remove the GPL module checks. You can even distribute the result if you want.

Don't misrepresent the situation.