I guess a better way to start a conversation would be to point at all the effort and argumentation wasted over where the line between GPLed kernel modules and n

I guess a better way to start a conversation would be to point at all the effort and argumentation wasted over where the line between GPLed kernel modules and non-GPLed kernel modules is in the Linux kernel, as well as runtime disadvantages in some cases. The efforts to get ZFS encryption on Linux are a good recent example of this problem: they had to port the in-kernel crypto implementation from Illumnos (basically OpenSolaris) even though the Linux kernel has a perfectly good implementation of AES-GCM that would've worked without bloating the kernel modules. Add to that the resistance to forming stable ABIs (and sometime APIs) in part to push everyone to not only license any kernel module as GPL, but to also commit it to the one true kernel sources, and I think there's at least a discussion worth having. But definitely not one to be started with "cancerous GPL".