I'm speaking here as a Debian user and Free Software citizen, although I cannot deny nor set aside that I have much professional experience with the issue at hand. Here is my personal opinion, which I say on behalf of myself only, not my employer or other orgs I volunteer for (also, IANAL and TINLA):
First, I think Ben's explanation on the problems are salient. But, more importantly and generally, IMO, Debian should err on the side of caution in these situations. Until a few days ago, I had no idea that Debian *ever* shipped (even in non-free, which admittedly I don't use ;), GPL-incompatible .ko files like these. I think ever doing so is just a mistake because the risk is more than Debian should want to take. The politics of GPL-incompatible Linux modules is heated, and there are admittedly different opinions about the issue. You can probably guess my opinion and belief. But, I don't think it behooves Debian to place itself in the middle of that debate and take on risk, merely to ship something that is known to be at *best* non-free. Now that Ben, a copyright holder in Linux, has come forward to say he believes distribution of these modules in Debian is a GPL violation, I think Debian must respect his wishes and remove the modules from the archive. -- -- bkuhn
