On Friday 28 January 2005 15:15, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Ok, now I get it... they're trying to workaround the fact that
> > modify_ldt() is not exported.
> >
> > Thus they are probably violating the GPL
> I am under the impression that it is permitted to distribute a binary
> module, with only the "loader" under GPL.
No, I don't think so... the strict GPL interpretation is that you cannot
distribute a non-GPL work which links with GPL code...
In fact, distributions cannot distribute GPL code linking with XFree 4.4.
What you probably see is that NVIDIA modules (and ATI ones too I guess, but I
don't know well) have a binary-only part and a source-code part...
Linux developers mostly consider binary module to be ok until they are not
"derivative works". And when a symbol is not exported, many times, it is
because kernel developers feel that code using it is a derivative of the
kernel.
In this case, it's maybe different - nobody thought that the sys_modify_ldt
symbol should have been exported. That said, if somebody asked the question,
the answer could be "No, it must not be exported, because modules using it
are derivative works". On the other side, any userspace program can call the
modify_ldt syscall.
> Do you mean that they are actually violating the license,
Well, just a rough feeling... I am not a lawyer.
> or that they
> are evading the kernel's tainting mechanism?
> I suspect that they want to
> avoid users getting the message about tainted kernels.
No, users will get the message, unless the module declares it self as "GPL"
with a "MODULE_LICENSE("GPL") directive in the code, which it should not.
> If so, then I
> would like to complain to them, because 1) it is disgusting behaviour
> and
> 2) it makes my life more difficult having to take care of their
> stupid code.
For your specific problem, I'm applying your fix to next version of the SKAS
patch (which I'm publishing anyway with other work). See my other mail. Not
that it is a bug of the SKAS patch or of the ATI module alone.
For the GPL issue, you should probably ask to LKML (or post a letter to
LWN.net about this issue - they could maybe publish it and you'd see the
comments) or on slashdot.org (which is actually a discussion forum) - I have
read discussions about such issues, but I'm not myself an expert.
--
Paolo Giarrusso, aka Blaisorblade
Linux registered user n. 292729
http://www.user-mode-linux.org/~blaisorblade
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