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Linus Puts Kibosh On Banning Binary Kernel Modules
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."
This isn't meant to be a troll, but will probably be taken as such, oh well.
/I realize nobody is likely going to listen to me/
I think he was wrong at simply
It's either false modesty or ignorance [not using the word as an insult]. There are enough people who worship at the altar of Torvolds that no matter what he says, someone will listen. His work has affected a lot of lives to their benefit (directly or indirectly), so it does make a lot of sense.
And, although I dislike his OS (I use another OSS OS that gurantees at least 1 troll vote whenever I mention it), I do very much agree with his other statements in that article as well.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Because, his RIAA objection is flawed. Using free code that links/attaches into GPL-ed code is the license _requirement_, just like payment is a requirement for RIAA music. It is NOT about telling how to use that certain code as he argues. This is definitely a copyright issue and the RIAA's equivalent would be NOT selling music to someone who didn't pay for it, not the DRM crap.
If Linus doesn't think that the terms of the license should be uphold because of his convictions, maybe he should have went with a different license in the first place? I think that in retrospect his beliefs are closer to the BSD license than to GPL. That's ok, he's a technically minded engineer. He doesn't have to have an agenda, even if that agenda is keeping freedom. I am generally opposed to practicalism as it focuses on short term, but I can certainly understand that different people have differing opinions.
One reason is why I'm opposed to the patch is given by Linus though: the closed-source people would just move their proprietary stuff into userspace and communicate with the kernel by a gpl-ed shell in kernelspace. It wouldn't solve the moral problem ("free/open code"), these companies will only open source their drivers when they think it is advantegous for them. A kernel modification will certainly not force them.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I understand why those that want to ban binary only modules. It causes hell for everyone on the kernel dev team.
But.... banning them instantly pisses off every single company that is barely putting out a hardware driver for Linux already (nvidia for example) A ban will not make these people go "oh,ok... we'll release the source code." they will simply flip off all Linux users and tell them to pound sand.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm already in a situation where most distributions don't even install because the nv drivers they try to load at default won't work on my Geforce 6800. Even the latest vesa drivers seem unbearably slow. If this patch got into the tree, I'd switch to windows the exact same day.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Actually, Linus's comments are not very negative. When he's negative, he capitalises and underscores and asterisk-ises words all over the place, and uses the phrases "NEVER", "fundamental", and "so lets not even talk about it".
This particular way of blocking proprietary drivers has been withdrawn, but the idea seems to still have support, or at least be open for debate.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I don't understand -- if he sincerely thinks there are genuine violations of his copyright, he can get a lawyer and do something about it. It's not like there's any shortage of legal representaion available to a linux kernel developer. Locking out all binary modules hardly seems like an appropriate solution.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"If people take our code, they'd better behave according to our rules. But we shouldn't have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we _listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave according to our rules just because they _use_ our system."
Clearly Linus does like the GPL restricting those who would distribute code (whereas BSD causes no restrictions). The point Linus is trying to make is that we have to distinguish between limitations to distribution and limitations to the end user. The proposed patch would mostly have limited the end-user (making it annoying for them to run binary modules). Linus is saying that we shouldn't try to limit the freedom of the end-user with technical restrictions. But (as quoted above) he clearly does like the fact that the GPL forces people who "take the code" to "behave according to the rules."
Hence Linus would not be happy with a BSD license.
I disagree, Linus does care about derived works. Much as I admire the altruistic nature of the BSD license, it offers absolutely no protection from derived works. What Linus doesn't care for is imposing the derived work status on non-derived works. To put this in perspective, if Linux is a DVD player, Linus says you have to show any bits you change in the DVD player code, but he's not going to force you to show the bits on the DVDs you play. Personally, I think the BSD license is not a good choice for platform type code, it's too tempting to create an incompatible closed source fork as a competitive advantage. However, I think it's great for application type code, where you don't have this scenario of having rely on potentially closed-source BSD fork to run some software.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I don't think so. He seems very vocal about the "not imposing limitations to usage" side, but the part where if you use his code you have to share yours seems to be important. I'd sum it up as saying: Linus is happy with the GPL v2 license rather than the GPL v3 one.
okay in theory one cannot link any binairy blob with the kernel and redistribute it, this is forbidden by the (strong copy-left of the) GPL.
but if Linus wants to allow this why not put Linux under a license with a weaker copyleft, like the LGPL?
at the current situation i think the kernel devs are right when they feel the GPL is violated.
cies breijs.
The point is the message that this brings across. At the moment people are pretty lax about binary dirvers. A ban on them in the vanilla kernel will go a long way in telling the driver vendors to make their specs free or get out of Linux land. Free drivers would be awesome, but I don't know if Linux is strong enough to actually influence the vendors at this point so we might end up with nothing. Plus, implementing this at the code level seems like the wrong place to be doing it. As Linus said, the license ought to control the distribution not the usage.
From another perspective, Linus's algorithm for deciding pragmatism is based on a greedy algorithm - it always spits out answers that look reasonable in the short term. He may be an excellent programmer and good project leader, but he seems to lack a sense of perspective.
Well, FSF's sense of "long-term" perspective has given them HURD. Linus's "lack" of perspective gives me Working Software Right Now(tm). In the end, that's all businesses really care about.
So I'm a little hazy on this one. If proprietary hardware vendors release proprietary drivers, what exactly is the harm? Sure, it would be nice to have them GPLed so they can be extended, or even trimmed down, but it's not like you're going to need the driver if you don't have the hardware. In the case that the hardware vendor is slow to make Linux drivers, or just decides to not make them at all, the community has created drivers of their own.
Seriously, this is more a question that a statement. What is the harm to Linux? Whenever I build a Windows machine I find that some drivers are available in the OS due to Microsoft's contracts with hardware vendors, Microsoft has made many of it's own drivers, and some of the drivers must be hand loaded. I'm not sure I understand the problem with this being workable on Linux.
I understand that it would be difficult to keep up with all these vendors, but that doesn't neccessarily mean we have the right to make them open their proprietary code. Open Source has always been about the community doing for itself what proprietary software vendors wouldn't. I'm not sure I got the memo where we decided that it was about forcing others to not be proprietary. The one is giving, where the other is taking. I feel better about giving.
TW
Is it part of this bigger picture of yours to not allow people to run certain kinds of code on their computer?
The harm is this:
Say you buy an ATI Radeon 917183712. You install the proprietary drivers in x.org 11.92, and they run fine. Then, the Radeon 32648956125 comes out, and new "unified" drivers are released. Only thing wrong: the Radeon 917183712 is still on the market and is still actively distributed, and will remain so for the forseeable future in embedded chipsets (servers and laptops), however, ATI elects to drop support for the Radeon 917183712 in the driver to encourage (force upgrades) to the brand-new Radeon 32648956125 if you want to run x.org 12.78
OK so the model and version numbers in the above are insane, but this is EXACTLY what ATI has done time and again. They drop support for product which is STILL IN THE CHANNEL (let alone not even obsolete) in their drivers. If the drivers were open source, this would not be an issue and you can run x.org 7.0, 7.1, or 15.0 regardless of whether or not ATI bothers to update it, because the x.org team will keep the famework around the driver updated.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Buy a desktop with integrated Intel graphics, slap in an "ADD2" card for DVI LCDs, and you have a fully open-source graphics system.
It works well for me - maybe not cutting edge video performance, but its not bad - way better than vesa or ati or nv open drivers.
- Mike
I believe there is a restriction in 64-bit vista that prevents unsigned drivers.
Nope. There is a restriction in all versions of Vista against using unsigned kernel mode drivers. However, the new Windows Driver Model makes it possible for 99% of drivers (minus graphics drivers) to run in usermode.
So, you can't run unsigned kernel mode drivers. But, unlike XP, you don't have to run kernel mode drivers - they all run in userspace. Interesting, since this will cut heavily into the profits Microsoft makes from driver signing, but it make the OS a billion times more stable - usermode drivers can't bluescreen. (This is also why there's "hardware compatibility" problems with Vista right now - although the user-mode drivers are easier to write, not everyone has ported their drivers yet.)
DATABASE WOW WOW
But Linus has spoken out in favour of DRM.
So, let's see: Torvalds is opposed to DRM unless it's actually restricting what you can do with your data. When it's not actually DRM at all, but a means to ensure your operating stays open, modifiable, and auditable, then it's evil.
This is yet again why Linux needs to be forked.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm afraid the days of drivers being programs that tweaked registers is long gone, my friend. Some of them include advanced optimizing compilers. There's a reason the nvidia driver is nearly the same size as the kernel itself - it's an extremely complex piece of code, with many clever things being done in software.
Doesn't VMware Workstation install binary modules into the kernel? For a lot of people VMware Workstation is very necessary from day-to-day use. I know that VMPLayer and GSX server is now free, but Workstation has oh so much power and configurability. Also, locking people out from using an upwards of $500 program is going to piss a lot of people off, such as myself. I'm sure VMware could work their way around it, but right now it does Just Work(tm) and I am very greatful for it.
:-)
I may be going out on a limb here and may not understand completely how Vmware works, but from what I can see from installing it just last night [recently wiped and installed Gentoo over SUSE 9.1] it searches for a module and if it cannot find one that works, it compiles one?
Please correct me if I am wrong. Half of this comment is a statement and half is a question.
A similar situation exists for many printers, printer-fax-copier devices, graphic tables and many other hardware devices.
In all cases the usual reason given by the companies for not providing a drivers is that they do not want to make the drivers open source and thus expose the inner workings and maybe trade secrets to the general public.
With wireless drivers there is the additional issue of legal requirements: a driver must not allow, for example, to drive the radio with more than the allowed power.
Unless LINUX finds a way for companies to provide closed drivers, I do not see too bright a future when it comes to support common hardware devices.
A similar problem exists when it comes to handling media, but thats a different topic.