Sunday, December 17, 2006

Kernel Developers: GPL-Only Modules in 2008

As you will read when you click on the link above, there are a lot of Linux kernel developers who want to do away with proprietary "binary only" modules being introduced into the kernel. This is in the interest of free software purity. To be free software, the source code must be available to the user and there are currently a LOT of drivers and other modules for which source code is not available.

Linus Torvalds opposes this, but will not stand in the way if that is what the developers want to do. Linus' position is that doing this is just another restriction on users, which has a lot to do with their reasons for developing Linux - to avoid restrictions on what they can use their computers for.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I side with Linus on this, but could live with it either way.

Jack

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