Ubuntu tainting the kernel with proprietary drivers ?

[Lee Revell]

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 13:41 -0500, Scott Dier wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > If including proprietary firmware constitutes a "non-free OS" then you
> > must also consider running a completely open source OS on a machine with
> > a proprietary BIOS to be a non-free OS, or communicating with a Windows
> > box across the network to taint the system.
> 
> The problem I see with it is the promise of main/ -- I don't have 
> software for the firmware let alone the proper license isn't in the 
> 'copyright' file for the linux-image package in main.

Sure.  It's just important to keep the terminology straight -
proprietary firmware does not taint the kernel (kernel tainting has a
specific meaning - that something bad has been done that renders the
kernel impossible to debug, like a hardware fault, loading a proprietary
driver or forcibly loading a module).

Proprietary firmware may make the kernel illegal to distribute, but
that's a legal issue not a technical one.  Proprietary drivers make the
kernel undebuggable.  They are very different.

Lee