I was pretty shocked when the idea to ban proprietary kernel modules on Linux first surfaced. Binary hardware drivers and VMware came to mind - if the ban is in place, we won’t be able to use these. And many other kernel modules.

As if Linux hasn’t got enough problems regarding hardware drivers as it is.

I was just about to write a response to the idea, when I found out that Linus already rejected it. Seems like we can always count on the man to ensure that common sense is actually common in Linux community. Good for us.

And he didn’t mince his words :

Because I think it’s stupid. So use somebody else than me to push your
political agendas, please.

He’d like to keep Linux dev strictly technical. Couldn’t agree more:

We should make decisions on TECHNICAL MERIT. And this one is clearly being
pushed on anything but.

Here’s a reminder that this kind of thinking is exactly the way of thinking of the proprietary vendors :

If people take our code, they’d better behave according to our rules. But
we shouldn’t have to behave according to the RIAA rules just because we
_listen_ to their music. Similarly, nobody should be forced to behave
according to our rules just because they _use_ our system.

A sarcastic reminder on the consequences of these way of thinking :

Do you really want to argue that “everything that has touched anything
copyrighted AT ALL is a derived work”? Do you feel lucky, punk?

As now, the idea has been thrown away. That’s a relief.
Back to work…

References :
[ 1 ] - [ 2 ]

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 17:59 and is filed under Teknoblogia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.