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

[Martin J. Bligh]

>>> All bugs can be debugged or fixed, it's a matter of how hard it is
>>> to do (generally easier with open-source) and *who* is responsible
>>> for doing it (i.e. supporting the modules).
>> 
>> Yes, exactly. The tainted mechanism is there to tell us that it's not
>> *our* problem to support it. And you deliberately screwed that up,
>> which is why everybody is pissed at you.
> 
> It was already screwed up, and causing unnecessary support burdens
> both on the community ("help! what does tainted mean") and vendors.
> This thread and previous ones have shown ample evidence of that.
> Let's deal with the root problem and fix the messages, as Rik van Riel
> has suggested.
> 
> Most third-party module suppliers have been confronted with the same issue
> and forced to work around it (in other imperfect and sometimes clumsy ways).

Odd that none of them just submitted a patch to fix the "real problem" then.
Sorry, I don't believe that was your only intent.

> One of them redirects the messages to a separate file and appends
> the following notice:
>
>  > ********************************************************************
>  > * You can safely ignore the above message about tainting the kernel.
>  > * It is completely political and means just that the maintainers of
>  > * of modutils package dislike software that is not distributed under
>  > * an open source license.
>  > ********************************************************************

Which is bullshit - It's not political, it's a matter of support. Problems
that appeared to be VM issues, or other things, turned out to be binary
driver issues, which we can't fix, and is a total waste of our time. 
Whether you agree with what we chose to support or not is completely
immaterial - it's not your call.

M.

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