[hsflinux] driver problem

Jon jon787 at myrealbox.com
Fri Feb 27 13:23:32 EST 2004


As far as I know your drivers are under the license listed at
http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/license.php
So I was really curious when I installed them and didn't get a warning
message about 'tainting' my kernel like I get when I install the nvidia
graphics drivers.

The tainted kernel warning occurs whenever you load a module that is not
GPL'd into the kernel. This is done by string comparison on the
MODULE_LICENSE string in the module.

Here is that section from mod_engine.c
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL\0for files in the \"GPL\" directory; for others,
only LICENSE file applies");

Looks okay, until you notice the pesky null character stuck in it.
As any C programmer will tell you, the end of a string is marked by a
null character. So the effective string in MODULE_LICENSE is only "GPL".

While personally I think this is a nice trick, I doubt Torvalds and/or
Stallman would agree. I will wait a week for a response on this mailing
list before asking them what they think of it.
-- 
Jon
"I don't care to belong to any organization that accepts
 me as a member." -- Groucho Marx



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