Linus Puts Kibosh On Banning Binary Kernel Modules 494
microbee writes "On LKML's periodic GPL vs. binary kernel module discussion, Andrew Morton hinted that he favors refusing to load binary modules in 12 months. Greg Kroah-Hartman then posted a patch to do exactly that. Surprisingly Linus chimed in and called it 'stupid' and a 'political agenda,' and even compared it with the RIAA's tactics. Later in the same thread Greg withdrew his patch and apologized for not having thought it through."
Not surprising at all (Score:4, Informative)
Look at it from the dev's POV (Score:5, Informative)
It's just that I'm so damn tired of this whole thing. I'm tired of
people thinking they have a right to violate my copyright all the time.
I'm tired of people and companies somehow treating our license in ways
that are blatantly wrong and feeling fine about it. Because we are a
loose band of a lot of individuals, and not a company or legal entity,
it seems to give companies the chutzpah to feel that they can get away
with violating our license.
So when someone like Andrew gives me the opportunity to put a stop to
all of the crap that I have to put up with each and every day with a
tiny 2 line patch, I jumped in and took it. I need to sit back and
remember to see the bigger picture some times, so I apologize to
everyone here.
And yes, it is crap that I deal with every day due to the lovely grey
area that is Linux kernel module licensing these days. I have customers
that demand we support them despite them mixing three and more different
closed source kernel modules at once and getting upset that I have no
way to help them out. I have loony video tweakers that hand edit kernel
oopses to try to hide the fact that they are using a binary module
bigger than the sum of the whole kernel and demand that our group fix
their suspend/resume issue for them. I see executives who say one thing
to the community and then turn around and overrule them just because
someone made a horrible purchasing decision on the brand of laptop wifi
card that they purchased. I see lawyers who have their hands tied by
attorney-client rules and can not speak out in public for how they
really feel about licenses and how to interpret them.
Please think of the coders, and the shit they have to put up with while making your free operating system the next time you start clamoring for these closed source binary blobs.
Oh irony (Score:4, Informative)
what you do is "right" or not, you are morally corrupt.
Let's not go there. We don't base our morality on law."
-- Linus Torvalds
Apparently our morality is simple pragmatism?
Re:Linus was wrong on one point (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was referring to the RMS crowd, who won't.
Question regarding binary drivers. (Score:5, Informative)
What Linus is saying may not exclude the possibility of a single kernel dev suing Nvidia for GPL license violations or possible copyright infringent.
Just a thought,
BBH
Re:Licence terms (Score:4, Informative)
What gives you the impression that copyright does not extend past the death of the author? It most certainly does.
In the United States, it is life of author plus 70 years (see How long copyright lasts [wikipedia.org]).
So if you wanted to change the licence to BSD, you would need to contact the heirs of these dead people.
Re:Licence terms (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linus have a right to his opinion (Score:4, Informative)
The kernel accepts binary modules by design and default. Even if the "other copyright holders to the Linux kernel" mattered in this case (they don't, see below); they submitted their code and efforts in agreement with things as they stood then, not some potential future version that Morton might want to make. So you're wrong on that point, despite any arguments they might make or political positions they might support, when the chips were down they did support kernel modules and there is no reason at all they should be illegal.
Further, a large majority of said other copyright holders wouldn't matter if they wanted to. A contributor might have given something great and valuable to the linux kernel. Unless they're the maintainer of the portion that actually handles loading modules, too bad so sad. If I'm not mistaken that's Torvalds and Morton. Everyone else, no matter how great their bluetooth subsystem is, can no more demand linux "make binary modules illegal" than you could of Microsoft.
~Rebecca
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:5, Informative)
If that were the case this patch wouldn't have been submitted. If you read the withdrawal email you'll see that there are "hundreds".
You as an end user just don't see them because they're all specialized for certain tasks or equipment. Most people just see the video drivers.
Not going to happen. NVidia and ATi have stated they couldn't open up the drivers if they wanted to. There's just too much licensed IP they don't have the rights to open.
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_transport#Carri
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:4, Informative)
There isn't any, as long as they're not derivative. When Greg withdrew his patch he said he was driven by the hundreds of other closed source modules that are closed despite being GPL-derived. Forcing all modules open would help put a stop to that. Linus pointed out that it would force open perfectly legal modules as well, and he wasn't going to be put in the position of forcing his ideology on someone else, equating it to a form of DRM. His point was that if they wanted people to respect the GPL they needed to respect license choices of other peoples' non-derived code.
Re:Linus should have just went with BSD license (Score:3, Informative)
Using free code that links/attaches into GPL-ed code is the license _requirement_
No. The license requirement is that I cannot _redistribute_ GPL-ed code with binary code mixed. But if I pick up proprietary code, I mix it by myself on my machine, I compile it and I use it, I'm perfectly GPL-compliant, provided I don't redistribute it.
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but S3TC (the reason Unreal Tournament 2003 only ran with NVidia cards with the NV binary drivers until ATI released their first binary drivers) is the first well-known example.
Implementing S3TC goes WAY beyond documenting a few registers. Modern video drivers do far more than you realize, they aren't just some low-level glue.
Speaking of low-level glue, most if not all of the NVidia kernel module is in this category and source is available, but it's useless without the (non-kernel) userspace X11 driver.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Informative)
The difference is that generally there isn't a need to do so for that OS, whereas not every company makes drivers available for their hardware in Linux.
Re:Torvalds needs to get over himself. (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should actually learn the history of Linux before you open your mouth and prove your ignorance to the world.
practice what you preach. Linus named it "Freax" -- it was his friend Ari Lemmke, the FTP admin where the code was hosted, that named it "Linux". calling him "the community" is a bit pushing it.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Informative)
I spend more time dealing with Windows problems (XP home & pro) at home, than I do with Linux problems. Windows isn't free, and it costs more of my time.
Re:And of course Linus is right... (Score:4, Informative)
The closed driver has a security hole in it, which can be exploited remotely (e.g. by viewing a web page) and gives the attacker the ability to exploit code. If you want a fix, you have to update to the newest version of the driver. There's a catch though; the newest version doesn't support some older cards. If you want those older machines to not be vulnerable to infection just from viewing a web page, you need to upgrade their graphics cards as well.
Sounds unlikely? Well, that's exactly what happened to users of nVidia hardware. If the driver had been Free, then any users that cared enough could have back-ported the fix, or paid someone else to do so. The biggest problem with closed drivers is that, once a newer version of the hardware is released, it is in the manufacturer's interest to 'encourage' you, the user, to upgrade.
Re:Look at it from the dev's POV (Score:3, Informative)
If this is the case (and I'm not 100% sure I'm right here) then I think the linux licence needs these 'APIs' to be released differently.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Informative)
And Windows doesn't take LOTS of time to get working? Ever tried setting up IIS with LDAP and wikis? Spent hours trying to find out why files on the network were being mysteriously and only very occasionally corrupted? (Thanks, DLink and your buggy network card drivers for Windows.) Have that fresh Windows installation get pwned in less than a minute because you didn't know it must be patched before it touches the Internet? Maybe you really believe MacIntoshes "just work"? They're pretty good, but they aren't perfect either.
OSS gets a LOT of flak it shouldn't. Double standards. When a device doesn't work with Windows, that's the device's fault. When a device doesn't work with Linux, that's Linux's fault. But you know, if those device drivers are OSS, you at least have another option. Lot of talented people out there will be able to work on the drivers.
On the average Windows box, you then repeat this process ever 6 months because it got fricked up somehow. Nah -- it's as much trouble or more than linux, *AND* it costs me money to boot. Insult to injury. No thanks.
Re:Torvalds needs to get over himself. (Score:3, Informative)
Larger commercial software products, like games, database systems, or what-have-you are not touched by this issue.
Wrong! See Oracle's ASMlib [oracle.com] for one example of why you are wrong.
Re:Torvalds needs to get over himself. (Score:2, Informative)
Which has driver support for XGL-like effects: the nVidia closed source driver, or the nv open source one?
To make such a blanket statement like that's silly.