“‘A change after 2.6.24 broke ndiswrapper by accidentally
removing its access to GPL-only symbols,’ noted Pavel Roskin,
offering a patch to address the issue. Linux creator Linus Torvalds
was unimpressed, ;I’m not seeing why ndiswrapper should be treated
separately. If it loads non-GPL modules, it shouldn’t be able to
use GPLONLY symbols.’ The NDISwrapper project page explains, ‘many
vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a
Linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project
implements Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface
Specification) API within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for
wireless network card is then linked to this implementation so that
the driver runs natively, as though it is in Windows, without
binary emulation…'”