Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 28 Apr 2004 14:00:35 +1000 | From | "Nigel Cunningham" <> | Subject | What does tainting actually mean? |
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Hi all.
I'm probably going to regret this, but seeing the current discussion on binary modules makes me wonder:
What does tainting actually mean?
What I mean is, how does it help to know that a kernel is tainted? When I'm working on Software Suspend and someone sends me an oops, I don't really care whether it's marked as tainted or not. For all I know, even if it's not tainted, they may have thrown in half a dozen different patches aside from Suspend, any one of which could be playing a role in the appearance of the oops. It doesn't help me to know that the kernel was tainted. It helps me to know what the non-standard additions are (and how the kernel was configured), regardless of whether the additions mark the kernel tainted or not.
Of course I realise at the same time that maybe tainting has nothing to do with saying 'This isn't an unmodified tree' and everything to do with saying 'This kernel has had non-GPL code interacting with it'. If that's the case, I don't see the relevance of saying (as Paul did a little while ago):
"You deceived maintainers who receive "untainted" bug reports."
Indeed, the surrounding lines seem to make it clear that the real issue is not fixing bugs but politics. Thus my question: What does tainting actually mean?
Regards,
Nigel -- Nigel Cunningham C/- Westminster Presbyterian Church Belconnen 61 Templeton Street, Cook, ACT 2614, Australia. +61 (2) 6251 7727 (wk) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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