[$] A stable bug fix bites proprietary modules

The kernel-development community has long had a tense relationship withcompanies that create and ship proprietary loadable kernel modules. In theview of many developers, such modules are a violation of the GPL and shouldsimply be disallowed. That has never happened, though; instead, thecommunity has pursued a policy of legal ambiguity and technicalinconvenience to discourage proprietary modules. A"technical-inconvenience" patch that was merged nearly one year ago hasbegun to show up in stable kernel releases, leading at least onedeveloper to complain that things have gone a little too far.