I keep seeing this referred to, but I can't find any reference to it anywhere, I've glanced through the opensuse mail archives, opensuse news, Novell news, searched the Novell site (kernel remove/ban closed source/non-GPL), same with Google, for such a big change, it doesn't seem to have hit any news sites... Either that or the announcement doesn't include any of the keywords above...
http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-announce/2006-Feb/0004.html
Ciao, Marcus
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Yep, I found that, but that just refers to a change in the mechanism due to this concern. It doesn't explain what exactly is meant by this removal and its implications for end users, and what Novell/SUSE will be doing to ensure their customers aren't affected by this change.
Several modules will be gone from the shipping media. There will be an interface between 3rd party vendors and Novell to provide kernel modules (in the KMP style described there), making it easy for those 3rd party vendors to build modules. They can be offered by those vendors as easily installable resource (RPMs). Nothing is stopping normal packagers (like the packman guys, or who ever) to not just also offer kernel modules in this way. I understand (don't know for sure) that we are working with NVIDIA and ATI to make downloading their drivers possible this way. This is btw one reason for the packagemanager changes, that this package installation from multiple external sites is possible. Ciao, Marcus