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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."
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?
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.
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.