Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:19:03 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | RE: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license |
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On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Hua Zhong wrote: > > I have not heard so much WINING about WINE. I even see kernel developers add > more support in the kernel to support WINE. Why do people like to pick on > closed-source drivers being run by a wrapper? I see nothing wrong with that.
What is so hard to understand about the problem with bugs?
All software has bugs. Binary modules just mean that those bugs are - FATAL to the system, including possibly being a huge security hole. - impossible to debug - impossible to fix
In contrast, wine was _written_ to do this emulation, so by definition any "bugs" are in wine itself (although I suspect that wine people sometimes would prefer it if Office came with sources ;).
> Linuxant did a wrong thing by working around the warning message, but I > don't think it's fair to accuse of their business because they allow binary > drivers run on Linux.
Nobody has sued them over copyright infringement. What they are doing is likely legal - APART from the fact that they lied about the license, which is not only horribly immoral, it's also likely illegal under the DMCA.
Note: to me, the immoral part is the big one. If you want to flaunt the DMCA and take the risk of the feds coming after you as a matter of civil disobedience, all the more power to you. Let's not be hypocritical and claim to like the DMCA.
But let's not kid about this: adding that '\0' thing to try to make the kernel believe it was GPL'd code is not ethical, and there is no way to claim that it's needed, since the _only_ thing it suppresses are a few messages saying that the kernel is tainted as a result. Which it IS.
So don't bother trying to stand up for Linuxant. What they did was WRONG, and there are no excuses for it. And I hope that they have it fixed already and we can hereby just forget about this discussion.
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