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NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
Posted Mar 6, 2008 0:33 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953)In reply to: NDISwrapper dodges another bullet by iabervon
Parent article: NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
As I understood how the nVidia driver works, this is exactly the method. There is a GPL'd piece that integrates into the kernel and creates the interface to the binary driver. Just like ndiswrapper works, in fact I thought that the nVidia Linux driver was created because ndiswrapper showed them how to integrate a closed source binary driver into the kernel. I also thought this was one of the reasons certain developers hate ndiswrapper so much, they started the whole trend to the binary blob in the kernel thing.
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NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
Posted Mar 6, 2008 3:18 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]
I'm not sure about nVidia drivers, but I believe they are compiled specifically for Linux. The free and non-free parts are distributed together by the same entity. I think that's very different from ndiswrapper from the legal standpoint (but IANAL).What I know for sure, is that a non-free driver for Lucent Orinoco cards used such trick, and it predated ndiswrapper. That's why blaming ndiswrapper that it "started the whole trend" would be misleading.
Besides, driverloader is older than ndiswrapper, and it does the same thing as ndiswrapper. It's also non-free and was caught lying about its license, something that ndiswrapper never did.
NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
Posted Mar 6, 2008 5:39 UTC (Thu) by im14u2c (subscriber, #5246) [Link]
Apparently, the NVIDIA adapter code sets its license to "NVIDIA", so it doesn't get access to GPLONLY symbols. I haven't checked this myself, but I've seen others mention it.
NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
Posted Mar 6, 2008 8:37 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]
You are completely right:$ modinfo nvidia ... license: NVIDIA ...
NDISwrapper dodges another bullet
Posted Mar 6, 2008 16:22 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
It's very different in that the binary blobs that NDISwrapper loads were written without knowledge of the Linux kernel, and the binary blob that the nVidia shim code loads were written using knowledge of the Linux kernel as reference. This is much the same difference as that between writing an encyclopedia without having Britannica and writing one while using Britannica. In the latter case, you have to be a lot more careful about a lot of things in order to avoid doing things you shouldn't.