Editing Loadable kernel module (section)

==== Linuxant controversy ====
In 2004, Linuxant, a consulting company that releases proprietary [[device driver]]s as loadable kernel modules, attempted to abuse a [[Null character|null terminator]] in their <code>MODULE_LICENSE</code>, as visible in the following code excerpt:

<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL\0for files in the \"GPL\" directory; for others, only LICENSE file applies");
</syntaxhighlight>

The string comparison code used by the kernel at the time tried to determine whether the module was GPLed stopped when it reached a null character (<code>\0</code>), so it was fooled into thinking that the module was declaring its license to be just "GPL".<ref>{{cite web|author=Jonathan Corbet|title=Being honest with MODULE_LICENSE|url=https://lwn.net/Articles/82305/|publisher=LWN.net|date=April 27, 2004|access-date=October 30, 2012|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102095811/http://lwn.net/Articles/82305/|archive-date=November 2, 2012}}</ref>