Editing Loadable kernel module (section)

==== License issues ====
In the opinion of Linux maintainers, LKM are [[derivative work|derived works]] of the kernel{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}. The Linux maintainers tolerate the distribution of [[Proprietary software|proprietary]] modules (such as [[NVIDIA GPU]] drivers),{{Citation needed|date=April 2012}} but allow only [[GNU General Public License]] (GPL) modules to merge to kernel tree of mainline Linux kernel.

Loading a proprietary or non-GPL-compatible module will set a 'taint' flag<ref>{{cite web |date=2011-06-21 |author=Linus Torvalds |title=Documentation/oops-tracing.txt |publisher=kernel.org |url=http://repo.or.cz/w/linux-2.6.git/blob/HEAD:/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt#l222 |access-date=2011-10-03 |display-authors=etal |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002110747/http://repo.or.cz/w/linux-2.6.git/blob/HEAD%3A/Documentation/oops-tracing.txt#l222 |archive-date=2011-10-02 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.html|title=Tainted kernels|work=The Linux kernel user’s and administrator’s guide}}</ref> in the running kernel—meaning that any problems or bugs experienced will be less likely to be investigated by the maintainers.<ref>{{cite web |date=2006-03-24 |author=Jonathan Corbet |title=Tainting from user space |publisher=[[LWN.net]] |url=https://lwn.net/Articles/184879/ |access-date=2011-10-03 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111116215244/http://lwn.net/Articles/184879/ |archive-date=2011-11-16 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=2007-07-26 |title=Novell support documentation: Tainted kernel |url=http://www.novell.com/support/viewContent.do?externalId=3582750&sliceId=1 |access-date=2011-10-03 }}</ref> LKMs effectively become part of the running kernel, so can corrupt kernel data structures and produce bugs that may not be able to be investigated if the module is indeed proprietary.