Binary-only kernel modules may be banned

Binary-only kernel modules may be banned

Posted Dec 14, 2006 6:14 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Binary-only kernel modules may be banned by mgh
Parent article: Binary-only kernel modules may be banned

Obviously this is not be in the spirit of free SW - but I don't think that this policy change is likely to have too much impact.

Oh, but it will. Intent is very important when you are talking about legal stuff. Since your "GPL shim plus binary blob" approach was explicitly blessed many years ago for at least one blob (AFS driver) it's more-or-less clear that such approach is not totally against the intent of kernel developers. If they claim: we're sick and tired of this crap and no longer like to see it - it's totally different thing. Especially if there are will be warnings and so on. Of course embedded companies like to use three or four years old kernels and there are they can play as they wish so it'll not stop them right away...

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