“On December 6th, 2005 the kernel developers en mass decide that
binary modules are legally fine and also essential for the progress
of linux, and are as such a desirable thing. At first, the
development process of the linux kernel doesn’t change much other
than a bunch more symbols getting exported, and EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
removed.“Within 3 weeks, distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
SuSE’s SLES distribution start to include a wide variety of binary
modules on their installation CDs. Debian renounces this and stays
pure to the cause, as do other open distributions like Fedora Core
and openSuSE…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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