Re: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license

[Timothy Miller]

Chris Friesen wrote:
> Marc Boucher wrote:
>
> > On Apr 27, 2004, at 1:46 PM, Chris Friesen wrote:
>
>
> > > Does your company honestly feel that misleading the module loading 
> > > tools is actually the proper way to work around the issue of 
> > > repetitive warning messages?  This is blatently misleading and does 
> > > not reflect well, especially when the "GPL" directory mentioned in 
> > > the source string is actually empty.
> >
> >
> >
> > It is a purely technical workaround. There is nothing misleading to 
> > the human eye,
>
>
> modinfo reports a GPL license, and the kernel does not report itself as 
> tainted.  That's misleading.
>
> > and the GPL directory isn't empty; it is included in full in our 
> > generic .tar.gz, rpm and
> > .deb packages.
>
>
> My apologies.  I was going on the word of the original poster.


Even that is a violation of the GPL.  You can't link closed-source code 
with GPL code and release it legally.

Binary-only modules are technically a violation of the GPL, but kernel 
developers have chosen to allow it under tight constraints.

But the building and releasing ANYTHING which is made up of GPL code and 
closed-source code and released as an atomic unit (not merely agregated 
on the same medium) is illegal.

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