KernelTrap - Windows

NDISwrapper and the GPL

Jeremy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:09:40 +0000

"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." Due to this, Linus explained:

"Ndiswrapper itself is *not* compatible with the GPL. Trying to claim that ndiswrapper somehow itself is GPL'd even though it then loads modules that aren't is stupid and pointless. Clearly it just re-exports those GPLONLY functions to code that is *not* GPL'd."

Git on Windows

Jeremy — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:15:10 +0000

"This lovely dark 4am is as good an occasion as any to offer to you the 5th issue of the msysGit Herald, the not-quite-biweekly news letter to keep you informed about msysGit, the effort to bring one of the most powerful Source Code Management systems to the poor souls stuck with Windows," began Johannes Schindelin on the git mailing list. He noted that the project was finally concentrating on getting git to work on Windows, having finally gotten the installer working. The Git on MSys project home page notes,

"Unfortunately, Git on Windows is only officially supported using Cygwin. However, there is a fork (hopefully to be merged with 'official' git real soon now) which enables you to compile git using MinGW/MSys. It is a little bit tricky to get ahold of everything needed (MSys, iconv, Tcl/Tk, gcc, make, zlib, regex, etc.), so this project tries to provide a single .zip (actually, a 7-Zip packed installer) which you can unpack, and by double-clicking on msys.bat everything is set. You can start right away to hack on your favourite Source Code Management tool."