Quoting Jason Baron <jbaron redhat com>:
I'd be interested in making this happen, if people think its a good idea...
From technical standpoint, that wuold be an excellent idea. You compile additional kernel modules once, place them in some standard location, and don't have to worry about them when new kernel update is out. Just like with almost any other operating system in known Universe (with exception of Linux). Current practice of recompiling kernel modules is just pain the ass. BTW, from part of your response, I concluded that with RHEL released kernels I could simply copy module binary from old kernel to new kernel without recompiling, and it should simply work? If you could confirm this, even that would greatly simplify things for end users.
On the political front, you'll probably be brushed hard by every single open source evangelist for making it happen. That would allow vendors to provide binary-only drivers for particular distributions that simply work with any kernel (oh my God, the driver somebody is giving for free, and it simply works). I've read somewhere that Linus made a statement that releasing code that is compiled against GPLed kernel header files and/or linking it into kernel would be violation of GPL (or something to that end, if I got that statement right in the first place). However, personally I don't think it would hold a water in court of law. On the other hand, I'm not a lawyer and could easilly be wrong. It's interesting to note nobody teseted that with existing non-GPL, closed-source drivers.
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