Credit where credit is due

No it really is Canonical's fault...for making it easy for non-technical users to build and use these proprietary drivers. Drivers that would be a gpl violation for Canonical to build and distribute in binary form.

http://www.linux.com/feature/55915

Canonical is doing a very very neat tap dance here. They don't distribute the binary drivers...if they did that they'd be engaging in an activity that is restricted by the gpl and could easily be called out on it. No, Canonical is much more clever, they encourage users to download the source and binary bits together and compile them locally on the system, avoiding the distribution of the infringing binary module all together. They've even made a point and click gui to kick off this process. Clever Canonical, skating around the edges of gpl infringement and at the same time introducing significant instability into their userbase's experience without an effort to adequately inform users as to what is going on and the pontential downsides.

I don't think its exactly fair to expect the upstream kernel developers to support this sort of behaviour. And I'll note, that because of the tricks being used to avoid a gpl violation scenario, Canonical can't even do its own integration testing on these modules. There are no centrally built and distributed binaries.

Canonical might be avoiding a gpl violation by doing things this way, but they are certainly breaking some of the spirit of the intent.

-jef