[MLB-WIRELESS] Fw: linksys (cisco) and the GPL.

[Steven Haigh]

This may be of interest to people here...

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Steven Haigh
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Johanson" <ericj at shmoo.com>
To: <rms at stallman.org>
Cc: "Matt Westervelt" <mattw at seattlewireless.net>; "Ken Caruso"
<ken at ipl31.net>; "Rob Flickenger" <rob at oreillynet.com>
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 7:03 PM
Subject: linksys (cisco) and the GPL.


> Hi Richard,
>
> I wanted to inform you about some GPL violations that has been troubling
> me - - linksys is pretty much in direct violation of the GPL.  We've been
> having a hard time starting any kind of dialog with them - - so now I'm
> asking for help.
>
>
> Rob Flickenger (O'Reilly author of several wireless books) has been
> 'hacking' on the new mips-based Linksys WRT54G wireless router.  It's
> running a modified GNU/Linux 2.4.5 kernel.
>
> Some of the source can be downloaded from their site, but it's quite
> incomplete.  Changes have been made to the kernel tree that prevent
> 3rd party modules from being functional - - but we can't really see what's
> been done with mucho effort in reverse engineering the complied kernel +
> modules.   Futhermore, there is clearly 'source missing':
>
> "arch/mips/brcm-boards/bcm947xx/compressed: No such file or directory. "
>
>
> Rob has been heading up this project; you can find some of his notes here:
>
> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3659
>
>
> ... and I'm guessing he could really use some help from the FSF with
> starting some dialog.
>
> My understanding of the violation(s):
>
> GCC has been modified (not released), kernel modules created & shipped 'as
> a whole' (source not released) & the kernel core has been changed
> (changes not released).  There may be other GNU tools that have been
> changed - - most of what they offer for download are direct tarballs from
> the authors  (busybox, zebra, udhcp, vixie-cron, etc), and may or may not
> match what's really built on the device.
>
>
> Their 'GPL center' is more than a little short on details:
>
> http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp
>
>
> I'm pleased that linksys is building products based on linux - - I hope
> that they continue to do so.  I don't want to see them get scared off by
> more bad press or lawsuits - - I'm not sure that would be in linux's best
> interests.  That being said, it would be very nice of them to stick to the
> license they agreed to.
>
>
> Thanks for taking the time to read this over - - if you have any
> questions, please don't hesitate to contact Rob or the folks cc'd on this
> email.
>
> Please feel free to forward this email to interested parties.
>
>
> TIA,
> Eric Johanson
> 206.321.3411
>
> shmoo.com
> vilos.com
> seattlewireless.net
>
>
> --
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