Re: Tainted Modules Help Notices

David Woodhouse (dwmw2@infradead.org)
Wed, 10 Oct 2001 15:13:03 +0100


kaos@ocs.com.au said:
> David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> wrote:
> > BSD-licensed modules shouldn't mark the kernel as tainted. If they do,
> > that's surely a bug.

> Any license not listed in include/linux/module.h is not GPL
> compatible. That list is currently (2.4.11)

In the world I live in, the BSD licence without the advertising clause is
GPL compatible.

Hence, the complaint from modutils signifies a bug, either in the wording of
the MODULE_LICENSE tag for the offending module, or in the list of valid
licences. I care not which - that's an implementation issue for you to
decide.

> > The warning should probably read 'Incompatible licence' instead of
> > 'non-GPL', too.

> No. Any license text not approved as GPL compatible is, by
> definition, incompatible.

Er, yes. By definition, incompatible. 'Incompatible' is a good word to use
when warning the user; the problem is not that the licence is non-GPL, but
that is it not _compatible_ with the GPL - now why didn't I think of using
that word?

--
dwmw2

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