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."

Comments

Quote from the patch withdrawl

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm so sorry Mr. Linus! Please forgive me! I was a bad wittle boy."

LKML could be a soap opera

[suso]

This week on LKML 24. Andrew and Linus get into it over politics, while Greg watches from the closet. Watch it Friday at 8, 7 central, 6 a mountain.

And of course Linus is right...

[Duds]

Seriously, there should be no "bans" of any code from Linux. That defeats the entire point. Banning people from loading their own kernal modules because YOU think there may be some weird legal issue is exactly the same as making your media player play only DRM files.

This should be a short topic, Linus' reply (which if you haven't read you should) should finish the entire conversation right here, it's a stupid and petty toys out of the pram act and I'm glad he shot it down.

Hopefully if it somehow does make it into the trunk, there will be very quickly versions with it removed releases as we go forward too because I don't think the wider community will have any truck with this at all.

Re:And of course Linus is right...

[JPrice]

Having the source code available is definitely an advantage. However, one of the other strengths of Linux is the amount of freedom that you have in how you use it. It seems a little hypocritical for members of the Linux community to criticize Microsoft (and, as Linux points out, the RIAA) for imposing restrictions on how you can use their software/content while imposing similar restrictions themselves. It doesn't matter that one group's motive is profit and another is some lofty political ideal... the end result is the same thing.

Banning binary kernel modules also has the potential for being the start of a slippery slope... if you're going to say that binary kernel modules aren't allowed, why not extend that to any piece of software that isn't open source? Maybe that would cause some people to open-source their software; I'd argue that it would also cause a lot of people to stop producing software for Linux altogether.

If you want Linux to be a paragon of open source virtues, banning binary modules is an excellent plan. If you want Linux to remain relevant in the real world, not so much.

Linus is sort of an anomaly

[Scarblac]

This is the strange effect brought on by the following situation:

• The GPL is the tool of a political movement, using it is a political statement
• Linux is one of the big poster childs of this movement
• The actual author of Linux doesn't really care about any of this

Re:Linus is sort of an anomaly

[kebes]

Very often people characterize Linus as 'not caring about the politics' or 'being a pragmatism not an idealist.' Yet if you read his post you see that he's very much thinking about rights and freedoms. He very much does care about the freedom issue. His stance just happens to be a bit different than others (RMS for instance).

Frequently I do not agree with Linus on issues, because his general view is to avoid meddling with things until absolutely necessary (whereas RMS, for instance, tries to think as far down the road as possible). However in this particular case Linus is dead right: putting code into the kernel for non-technical reasons, purely to limit the *end user* and specifically limit what they can do with their computer is very much "anti-computer-freedom" and should never be done.

So Linus is effectively saying "if we do this we limit the freedom of the end user, just like the RIAA is doing with DRM..." and he is quite right.

Look at it from the dev's POV

[i_should_be_working]

Before people start bashing those who proposed this, think of the devs who put so much of their time and effort into getting us Linux. And note that the proposal arose from a technical issue, not from a 'everything must be Free' stance. From the last thread /. links to, part of Greg's retraction:

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.

They have a point, but....

[Lumpy]

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.

Exactly

[rastilin]

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.

Re:Exactly

[bzipitidoo]

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.

Re:Linus was wrong on one point

[Shakrai]

I think he was referring to the RMS crowd, who won't.

You mean the GNU/Linux crowd, right?

Re:Torvalds needs to get over himself.

[kripkenstein]

Besides that, i agree with Linus, binary modules should not be banned. Because of the ability to use binary modules, a lot of commercial software are made available and that is A Good Thing (Tm)

Linus's reasons, as appear in his message, are completely and utterly different from yours. To briefly summarize: first, this prevents USE of binary modules, but the GPL can only come into effect when you DISTRIBUTE something (via copyright law). Second, this will just annoy people, by shoving the kernel developers' opinions down their throat (any they can change the kernel source to allow binary modules anyhow). Third, it won't work, because a small GPLed "shim" can load a binary driver (as NVidia already do).

However, he hates binary drivers, and for good reason. I agree both with this and with his reasons, and disagree with yours.