Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:28:21 -0700 (PDT) | Subject | Re: Tainted Modules Help Notices | From | "Morgan Collins [Ax0n]" <> |
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> I was under the same impression about the module licensing tagging. I > had read that it was suppose to be for maintainability (.i.e. source available so > kernel gods can debug) and not to enforce ideological conformity. Now I read that > anything not licensed under the GPL, including BSD or simply public domain source > code, will taint my kernel and modprobe complains about non-GPL stuff including > parport_pc which apparently did not have a license. Should I expect a Linux kernel > KGB to show up next? > I think what has happened here is a little bit of a misunderstanding.
I think that the modprobe source and the kernel source just aren't in sync with the development of the new (re DEVELOPMENTAL) MOD_LICENSE() implementation.
Weither or not the BSD-NAC is GPL compatible has already been determined, as it's in the kernel and the lead developers have said so. I trust them, they'll get sued if they don't look at things like that. Modprobe told me a BSD module was tainted, I assumed that ment it was incompatible with the kernel which is GPLed. I shouldn't trust everything I read :>
The problem lies in modprobe not having it in it's list of licenses to not mark as tainted.
When I modprobe ppp_deflate, it does not fail to load, it simply warned me that my kernel would be tainted. What does having a tainted kernel mean? It is to tell kernel debuggers if this is a clean kernel or if anything unusual has occurred.
> Furthermore I have to agree with the previous poster. Any module could > easily lie to MODULE_LICENSE about its licensing terms and that would not make it's > source automatically "free" and GPLable so I am now wondering if this tainting > mechanism is of any use at all. > If the purpose was to discriminate against licensing, I would agree. But since non-compatible source is not distributed with the kernel, and the mechanism is for debugging, what is the purpose of lying to the kernel? To confuse debuggers? No point in that.
> Just out of curiosity do all of these license tags in the modules take > up any permanent kernel memory, especially in a heavily modularize system? > A grep of /proc/kcore only showed the MODULE_LICESE in this email, and the scrollback buffer in my xterm, so I don't think so.
-- Morgan Collins [Ax0n] http://sirmorcant.morcant.org Software is something like a machine, and something like mathematics, and something like language, and something like thought, and art, and information.... but software is not in fact any of those other things.
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