Comments on: Linus rejects the idea of non GPL kernel modules

By: predrag

predrag — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:24:21 +0000

I have downloaded Gobuntu few days ago and there was not a restricted atheros driver after I installed it?! I was wandering why, but now I see. There is no restricted driver in use all because of this?
And let’s face it, there are very few things that did not dissapointed me in this world and one of those thing is Linux.
I feel glad about this article.

Nixcraft, thank you for saving my may.

By: vivek

vivek — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:42:30 +0000

Doomguy0505,

You can, you need to download and apply them using a script or compile them but default kernel tree will not contain anything non-gpl

HTH

By: Doomguy0505

Doomguy0505 — Wed, 16 May 2007 08:57:00 +0000

So this means that all 2008 versions of linux will have squiggly lines on the screen because we can’t use proprietary graphics drivers?

By: ilovearitel

ilovearitel — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:14:07 +0000

FTA:

So go get it merged in the Ubuntu, (Open)SuSE and RHEL and Fedora trees first. This is not something where we use my tree as a way to get it to other trees. This is something where the push had better come from the other direction.

So he rejected the idea for sure :D

> an egoistic techno-minded man..
…care to explain a bit????

By: port25

port25 — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:08:03 +0000

After doubts expressed by Linus, among others, this is unlikely to be implemented.

xio, I will go step further – he doesn’t understand business and end users at all. He just care about his shit (I remember he was calling Gnome and BSD devs idiots that is rude no matter how good you are at coding but don’t insult fellow developers).

Most end user wants thier pretty desktops and don’t care about GPL vs Non-GPL driver war. Period.

By: nixcraft

nixcraft — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:02:12 +0000

Linus is an egoistic techno-minded man, he is just an ordinary kernel hacker. RMS is our leader, free unix!
Hehe… Good point about userspace idea.

@Luke, yes idea was rejected by Linus for now. So users can use non-GPL nVidia drivers :)

Appreciate your posts.

By: xio

xio — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:42:09 +0000

> Remember Linux is all about freedom and not about locking down your a$$.

Someone is so dumb. It will be easy for, say, nVidia to move their closed-source code in userspace, while still providing an open-source kernelland interface. It DOES NOT require a full driver reconstruction and it DOES NOT push your honest freedom, but improves system stability. Linus is an egoistic techno-minded man, he is just an ordinary kernel hacker. RMS is our leader, free unix!

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 21:39:22 +0000

Hmm… What if someone writes a GPL wrapper module that will interface with the non-free binary code? Is that allowed?

I can see why they are doing this, but this is just going to suck for the people who just want to get their nVidia card working…