Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.germany.com!aioe.org! vlad-tepes.bofh.it!bofh.it!news.nic.it!robomod From: Greg KH <gr...@kroah.com> Newsgroups: linux.kernel Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Position Statement on Linux Kernel Modules Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:10:06 +0200 Message-ID: <aHMtw-1Dg-1@gated-at.bofh.it> X-Original-To: linux-...@vger.kernel.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) Sender: rob...@news.nic.it List-ID: <linux-kernel.vger.kernel.org> X-Mailing-List: linux-...@vger.kernel.org Approved: rob...@news.nic.it Lines: 193 Organization: linux.* mail to news gateway X-Original-Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:01:18 -0700 X-Original-Message-ID: <20080623050...@kroah.com> X-Original-Sender: linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org Xref: g2news1.google.com linux.kernel:19588 Hi, As part of the Linux Foundation Technical board, we confront the issue of closed source Linux kernel modules all the time, and we wanted to do something that could be seen as a general "public statement" about them that is easy to understand and point to when people have questions. So, after working on this for a while, and asking some of the other major contributors and maintainers of the kernel, what we have is below. There is also a site at: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Device_driver_statement that contains a link to a statement from the Linux Foundation about this topic, as well as some more descriptions and background information, and a copy of the full statement as well. I've also put a pretty pdf version at: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/ lkm_position_statement/lkm_pos_statement.pdf in case people want to print it out :) If there are any kernel developers who want to add their names to this statement, please let me know by private email and I will be glad to add it. thanks, greg k-h ------------------------------ Position Statement on Linux Kernel Modules June 2008 We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable. We have repeatedly found them to be detrimental to Linux users, businesses, and the greater Linux ecosystem. Such modules negate the openness, stability, flexibility, and maintainability of the Linux development model and shut their users off from the expertise of the Linux community. Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors. Therefore, in order to take full advantage of the cost savings and shared support benefits open source has to offer, we urge vendors to adopt a policy of supporting their customers on Linux with open-source kernel code. We speak only for ourselves, and not for any company we might work for today, have in the past, or will in the future. Dave Airlie Jens Axboe Ralf Baechle Arnd Bergmann Vitaly Bordug James Bottomley Josh Boyer Neil Brown Mark Brown David Brownell Michael Buesch Franck Bui-Huu Adrian Bunk Ralph Campbell Mauro Carvalho Chehab Denis Cheng Jonathan Corbet Glauber Costa Alan Cox Magnus Damm Ahmed S. Darwish Robert P. J. Day Helge Deller Jean Delvare Mathieu Desnoyers Alexey Dobriyan Daniel Drake Alex Dubov Randy Dunlap Michael Ellerman Jan Engelhardt Mark Fasheh J. Bruce Fields Larry Finger Jeremy Fitzhardinge Mike Frysinger Kumar Gala Robin Getz Liam Girdwood Thomas Gleixner Brice Goglin Cyrill Gorcunov Andy Gospodarek Thomas Graf Harvey Harrison Stephen Hemminger Michael Hennerich Tejun Heo Benjamin Herrenschmidt Kristian Høgsberg Henrique de Moraes Holschuh Marcel Holtmann Mike Isely Takashi Iwai Olof Johansson Dave Jones Jesper Juhl Matthias Kaehlcke Kenji Kaneshige Jan Kara Jeremy Kerr Russell King Olaf Kirch Roel Kluin Hans-JÃŒrgen Koch Auke Kok Jiri Kosina Mariusz Kozlowski Greg Kroah-Hartman Michael Krufky Aneesh Kumar Clemens Ladisch Christoph Lameter Grant Likely John W. Linville Yinghai Lu Tony Luck Pavel Machek Matt Mackall Roland McGrath Patrick McHardy Kyle McMartin Paul Menage Thierry Merle Eric Miao Akinobu Mita Ingo Molnar Andrew Morton Paul Mundt Oleg Nesterov Luca Olivetti Pierre Ossman Venkatesh Pallipadi Nick Piggin Nicolas Pitre Richard Purdie Mike Rapoport Sam Ravnborg Gerrit Renker Stefan Richter David Rientjes Stefan Roese Francois Romieu Stephen Rothwell Maciej W. Rozycki Mark Salyzyn Yoshinori Sato Holger Schurig Yoshihiro Shimoda Sergei Shtylyov Kay Sievers Alexey Starikovskiy Alan Stern Hirokazu Takata Eliezer Tamir Doug Thompson FUJITA Tomonori Dmitry Torokhov Marcelo Tosatti Steven Toth Theodore Tso Geert Uytterhoeven Arjan van de Ven Ivo van Doorn Wim Van Sebroeck Hans Verkuil Anton Vorontsov Daniel Walker Dan J. Williams Darrick J. Wong David Woodhouse Chris Wright Bryan Wu Rafael J. Wysocki Herbert Xu Vlad Yasevich Peter Zijlstra Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majo...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/