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Linux 6.6 To Better Protect Against The Illicit Behavior Of NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4244409

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Linux 6.6 modules infrastructure is changing to better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver.

Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols.

Given that symbol_get was only ever intended for tightly cooperating modules using very internal symbols it is logical to restrict it to being used on EXPORY_SYMBOL_GPL and prevent nvidia from costly DMCA circumvention of access controls lawsuits.

Luis Chamberlain further added in today's pull request: "Christoph Hellwig's symbol_get() fix to Nvidia's efforts to circumvent the protection he put in place in year 2020 to prevent proprietary modules from using GPL only symbols, and also ensuring proprietary modules which export symbols grandfather their taint.

The circumvention tactic used by Nvidia was to use symbol_get() to purposely swift through proprietary module symbols and completley bypass our traditional EXPORT_SYMBOL*() annotations and community agreed upon restrictions."

Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being.

The original article contains 476 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is why Linux will always struggle to be mainstream. They can't shake the grip of GPL. Forcing open source at gun point just alienates people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They can't shake the grip of GPL.

That's the point. They don't want to shake the grip of GPL. Nor should they, linux is already mainstream, being the most used kernel in the world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It alienates nvidia. Are any other mega-corps being difficult enough to cause problems with linux?

As for its struggle to become mainstream (I assume you refer to desktop), I'd credit that to Linux not being commercial. And hence not having a marketing department. As soon as you DO market it, it takes off like a rocket. (Android, ChromeOS, SteamDeck)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Good idea, lets give even more leeway to giant corporations and allow them to break standards, surely this will not set up a dangerous precedent.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for all the replies. Really should me how boned Linux is. And that alot of you have absolutely no idea how the GPL works. If you call a GPL function, the calling code MUST be GPL too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Afaik, you only need to take GPL into consideration if you distribute GPL software. So if you use the os glibc, you can call into it without having to disclose your source code.