The tainted message
Quoted 10 lines
Re: The tainted message
Quoted 5 lines · Christian Bornträger
Quoted 3 lines · Ian Molton
Warning: Module %s is not open source, and as such, loading it will make your kernel un-debuggable. Please do not submit bug reports from a kernel with this module loaded, as they will be useless, and likely ignored.
Quoted 5 lines
Warning: Source code for module %s is not publicly available. Problems with a kernel that has loaded this module can be debugged only by someone with access to the module source. Therefore, please submit any bug reports to the module supplier, not to the Linux kernel mailing list. -
The one on top is IMHO better. The reason is that the wording of the
second one, although giving better explanation why it (may) make the kernel undebuggable, implicitely suggests (to me as a nonative english speaker) that the problem is caused by the non compatibly licensed module. Which I venture is not true in a lot of cases.
Also, in both messages it is stated that the source is not publicly
available. This is not obvious to me. The module may just lack an explicitely stated license. Maybe just a case of not RTFMing the modules documentation, or an old source that hasn't been touched since introduction of the tainting stuff.
So, I would prefer:
"Warning: Source code for module %s may not be publicly available. Problems
with a kernel that has loaded this module can be debugged only by someone
with access to the module source. Therefore, please do not submit any bug
reports to the Linux kernel mailing list unless you can reproduce them without having this module loaded."
As for using the term "tainted" in the warning: I do not like it,
because it has a absolutely negative meaning if translated into German and maybe (likely?) other languanges. This could give the impression that the warning tries to tell the user that non-compatibly licensed modules are [the source of all] evil. Some of them may be evil, but I do not buy this concept in general.
Martin
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