Is Linksys Violating The GPL?

jap writes "According to this post on LKML, Linksys is shipping firmware for (at least their) 802.11g access-points based on Linux - without any sourcecode available or mentioning of it on their site. This could be interesting: it might provide the possibility of building an ueber-cool accesspoint firmware with IPsec and native ipv6 support etc etc, using this information!"

Comments

More From the Kernel List

[OctaneZ]

A couple follow ups on the kernel mailing list:

A very interesting bit from the busybox maintainer, who has evidently already sent linksys two letters

A post outlinging the possibility that Belkin is also shipping GPL'd code

A few other people are throwing their two cents in, but those were the most interesting, code be an interesting test of corporate policey, and the ability of the GPL to withstand a court battle.

Obligatory "not a GPL violation" post.

[mindstrm]

Two points. I always have two points.

First, as someone else already said, just becuase it uses a linux kernel doesn't mean they modified anything, it could be a stock kernel. If they wrote userspace drivers and/or kernel modules using existing interfaces for their custom hardware, they are not obligated to release anything.

Secondly, if they weren't abiding by terms they had to according to the GPL, it would be COPYRIGHT violation, not license violation, as if you don't comply with the license, copyright law says they can't redistribute it. I know it seems like a silly point, but it's not.

People talk about the GPL being "tested in court" and whatnot.. but the fact is: If you don't accept the GPL as valid, then copyright law still stands, and says you can't redistribute, or make derivitive works. A judge can rule the GPL as invalid, but that would mean that nobody had any rights to redistribute anything.

It's not a license you had to accept and agree to in order to use the product.. so you can't "violate" it.

Linus, or any other kernel developer could go to linksys, and say "I have not granted you permission to use my copyrighted work, please demonstrate why you think you are allowed to do this". They can then either cite how the GPL allows them to do what they do, or concede that they have no right to distribute.

So as unclear as I can be.. it's not a GPL violation... and people are not forced to release code because of a nonexistant GPL violation... although that might be an acceptable remedy to all parties in most cases. They could also be forced to simply stop doing it.

Re:Cisco IOS ?

[prizog]

Hi. I work for the FSF investigating GPL violations (and yes, we are also working on this Linksys thing). Can you tell me more about this Cisco issue? Is there any software FSF holds copyright on (the gnu c library, bash, gnu tar, gzip ...)? Does the unit come with an offer to provide source code?

BusyBox GPL violation

[andersen]

<BusyBox maintainer hat on>

This is what I did to verify that the Linksys firmware was violating the GPL....

#!/bin/sh
wget ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pub/network/WRT54G_1.02.1_US _code.bin
# I noticed a GZIP signature for a file name "piggy" at offset
# 60 bytes from the start, suggesting we have a compressed Linux
# kernel
dd if=WRT54G_1.02.1_US_code.bin bs=60 skip=1 | zcat > kernel

# Noticed there was a cramfs magic signature at offset 786464
dd if=WRT54G_1.02.1_US_code.bin of=cramfs.image bs=786464 skip=1
file cramfs.image

sudo mount -o loop,ro -t cramfs ./cramfs.image /mnt
ls -la /mnt/bin
file /mnt/bin/busybox
strings /mnt/bin/busybox | grep BusyBox
/usr/i386-linux-uclibc/bin/i386-uclibc-ld d /mnt/bin/busybox