NDISwrapper dodges another bullet

> If the official kernel were to accept a patch that would prevent
> ndiswrapper from accessing some symbols, nothing would stop a 
> distributor from reverting the patch, as GPLv2 gives distributors the 
> freedom to make modifications. 

This is true from a technical point of view, but there are probably other 
tricks available to get non-GPL modules to load. The whole point of the 
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL thing is more legal than technical. It goes along the 
lines of "If you use this symbol in non-GPLed code we may sue you". It 
also won't help if a distributor would remove the block since if they 
where really sued over a GPL violation, they couldn't distribute the 
kernel anymore making it hard to stay a linux distributor...

The thing I was wondering about is that Linus reserves himself the right 
to remove such patches, even though he doesn't own the copyright for the 
piece of code in question in about 99% of all cases. I suppose if a 
copyright owner was to send Linus such a patch for one of the owner's 
interfaces, Linus would probably be required to accept it from a legal 
point of view. (Strictly technically this is not true, of cource, see the 
first paragraph...)