Re: Linux 2.4.9-ac6

christophe barbé (christophe.barbe@lineo.fr)
Wed, 5 Sep 2001 14:50:39 +0200


Would it not be possible with your scheme to package a closed source driver
in an open source wrapper driver and then defeat your tainting technique.

Is it legally possible to copyright a kind of magic number with a copyright
allowing only it's used in open & public source driver ?

Christophe

Le mer, 05 sep 2001 11:57:17, David Schwartz a écrit :
>
> > >> I think, perhaps, the logic should be that a module
> > >> shouldn't taint the kernel if:
>
> > >> 1) The user built the module from source on that machine, OR
>
> > >> 2) The module source is freely available without restriction
>
> > > I just realized two things. One, there's a strong argument
> that this
> > > should be an AND, not an OR.
>
> > And as all distributions would fail (1) in initial form, all
> > distributions would result in tainted kernels. Is this the
> > intent?
>
> They wouldn't taint because the kernel signature would match the
> module
> signatures. I provided more detail on one possible way this scheme would
> work and it's not quite as simple as the summary above suggests.
>
> Basically, when you compile (or install) the kernel, a random
> 'signature'
> goes in. When you compile a module, the signature goes in too. You can
> then
> compare the module's signature to the kernel's signature to ensure they
> were
> compiled as a unit. Unfortunately, this doesn't ensure that the user has
> the
> source.
>
> I suppose, if the module source were freely available, then '2'
> would
> apply. If you keep it as an OR, then distributions wouldn't taint out of
> the
> box unless they included modules whose source distribution was limited. I
> think this is what you want.
>
> DS
>
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-- 
Christophe Barbé
Software Engineer - christophe.barbe@lineo.fr
Lineo France - Lineo High Availability Group
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