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Linksys Releases GPLed Code for WRT54G
petree writes "I stumbled across this on the Linksys website. Linksys has apparently caved to community pressure and released the GPLed source for linux running on their WRT54G. Cool Beans!"
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I was vary suprised that there wasn't a huge uproar when this was coverd on /. earlier.
If they had not released the source would buy their products again, to be honest I certainly would because they are the cheapest.
If you would not, does their decision to release the source change your mind?
There is no god
I'm so excited that I am going to have a dope 54mbps wireless network in my dorm room for only $215. No offense, but I think your money is better spent elsewhere :)
How big can your dorm room possibly be to the point where 54mbs wireless would be necessary?
It's really great to see a company that saw it had made a mistake, corrected it and moved on. My only wish is that more companies would take that attitude.
Yes, it would be nice to get the "Secret bits," like drivers, but this is actually better for the community in the long run. Why? Because Linksys will have released the GPL parts publically, without losing control of their "I.P." or the "I.P." of companies providing components for this product (if any).
"Viral" GPL gobbling "I.P." like pac-man with melanoma? Not really!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Did you really expect them to release proprietary intellectual property?
They complied with the GPL...they weren't required to do anything else, nor should a commercial enterpise be expected to do more if it doesn't aid their business.
-psy
I bet you like playing raquetball in the closet, too, don'tcha?
I design embedded systems.....and I can tell you that the last thing you want to do is to make it even easier to reverse engineer stuff. Things are bad enough as it is ;-)
Plus, if people were able to reprogram the unit, I'm not sure how that'd really help the community. You'd probably see a bunch of people doing silly "hacks" with the system and a bunch of confused users not knowing what "distribution" to run on their Linksys access point.
-psy
Agreed. It makes good engineering sense too. By leaving the kernel unmodified, it removes a maintenance headache. Engineers can design their IP to interface with the kernel in the standard way. The kernel then becomes a "black box" and is decoupled from the internals of the company's IP. It allows for a more modular and maintainable design.
If you use there products, shoot them a quick email to say 'thanks'.
It really is the polite thing to do. Plus it always feels good to be appreciated, and that goes for people who run big companies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's nice that you can see the GPL bits running on their box (Hey running a 2.4.5 kernel) - but it doesn't give you drivers, or scripts, etc.
The original flash image was decoded (by Andrew Miklas) as a cramfs filesystem. We have *all* the components available in binary form. Unless there is crytographic checking in the bootloader (i.e. a signed flash image) we're all set to go make our own images complete with Linksys's proprietary binaries and our hacked/improved GPL binaries.
To my knowledge, nobody has done this yet. I hope that doesn't last long. These units will make lovely general-purpose embedded machines if we can put our own code in them. We'd have to rely on Linksys binaries for some of the hardware, but personally I have no ideological problem with that. What I want is to be able to fix some bugs of the bugs and interface stupidities in the darn thing, and to add some of my own functionality, such as being able to ssh into it. Of course, I'd like it even more if Linksys released the full hardware specs, but hey. It's a start.
Now, I see the kind of hacking I described above, and which I fully intend to get involved in, as nothing but good for Linksys. If it turns out we can reflash the unit as it appears we can, I for one will be in the market for a few more of these.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A company makes hardware, they don't release software & driver code to public.
People say they are an evil corporation trying to hide their secrets and prevent users of rare operating systems from using their product.
A company makes hardware, they release software & driver code to public.
People say they want others to do their coding.
You just can't win can you?
BSD: free as in 'Look someone else did our work for us, and we don't have to give anything back'
GPL: free as in 'we can use it but we have to share.'
"...NetBSD is the most supperior embeded Open Source OS on Earth which runs on over 35 architectures."
what does the number of architectures have to do with whether or not its good?
Impressive, but one doesn't mean the other.
I like BSD, but statements lke that are just irritating.
Now if you'll excuse be, I have a bike shed to paint.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Dude, license your code however you want to and let others do the same. That is freedom, not the preachy stuff you just wrote.
Not very hard, is it?
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
This type of license strong-arming is the reason embeded market should choose BSD.
Sure, Linksys would have used BSD if BSD worked as well for them as Linux does. But Linux is better, supports more hardware, and supplies more of the features they need. That's because more programmers work on Linux, and that in turn is because of the licence - we know that our contributions to the public are going to *stay* public.
And by the way, I like BSD. I think there's some stuff in BSD that's better than Linux. I'm no fanatic, I'm just explaining the phenomenon.
Anyway, what's the big deal for Linksys if they accidently ended up letting everybody reprogram their hardware? It just means they sell more of it and make more money. That's gotta hurt, huh?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Keeping IP in binary modules is fairly straght formward way to partition IP in kernel space and is fairly common in the embedded industry.
Now I know RMS and others frown on this, but it is not illegal.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And this is exactly why companies should stay the hell away from Linux - the pirate mentality that goes with it.
This is using Linksys software on the Linksys hardware that it was provided with. How is it copyright violation?
Paul Vixie's license perhaps?
I don't think so:
- Safe on this account -- you are reading the license itself, as redistributed
- Source appears to be unmodified -- all diffs that I can see are known patches.
- There it is, no problem
- Again, here's the source, compliant again.
The license as stated applies to Vixie Cron, not necessarily to the aggregation of parts that is the entire product. IANAL so interpret this with council if it matters to you.Having followed this since the original post to the LKML, I have a slightly different viewpoint.
Linksys got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They probably didn't think twice about using embedded Linux; in fact, they may not have even made the decision themselves.
When the problem was pointed out to them, they gave several weeks of no conclusive answers, and now they've put up a simple web page with some source tarballs, all or none of which may be what's actually running on the APs. You can't even FIND the page using their support search engine (a search on GPL shows no hits), and they're certainly not announcing it anywhere I've seen.
It's the least they could do. Approximately.
They don't have to, but it would have been nice!
Several companies have released (under GPL or otherwise) software that they don't legally have to. Apple (Darwin) is a prominent example.
What I want, and what I know many other people want, is an 802.11g driver.
Many makers of 802.11g cards cannot lawfully provide such a driver under various radio frequency emission regulations. Because it's more expensive to build interlocks that prevent over-powered transmissions in hardware than in software, many cards implement the interlocks only in the driver. This makes it a bit harder to justify getting FCC approval for a driver for each platform.
Linksys has one. They choose not to release it?
Is it Linksys's choice, or is the Federal Communications Commission's choice to delay approval?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How else is Linksys going to distinguish itself from the rest of the Taiwanese crowd?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
BSD: free as in 'Look someone else did our work for us, and we don't have to give anything back'
Umm. Look, this is EXACTLY what BSD developers expect. This why it's released BSD. Shall I break out the dictionary definition of free? I'll give you a hint, it means having no restrictions. The GPL is very much a restriction. It is a very different philosophy than BSD and public domain code. It is in no way free as in the definition of the word.
Rather, it caters to a specific ideology, namely that of the FSF. Granted, you may consider GPL to be free, and it is certainly freer than proprietary software, but it is not quite as free as BSD and public domain.
You can be selfish and require people to share with you if you like. But, statements like yours are really irritating to those of us who want to give our code away for free.
The guys comment was very informative given the news story. Linksys doesn't want to 'share' with you. They shouldn't have used GPL code then, but rather BSD code. Right?
And please don't go on about how they *should* share. They are under no obligation to do so, if they did the country they operate from would certainly not be considered a free country anymore.
Freedom is created by having laws/rules. Without laws/rules there is no such thing as freedom because someone can trample another with no consequences.
If you want to enjoy the freedoms of a society then you are expected to contribute to that society by paying taxes, upholding the laws, etc. It is dishonest to expect to enjoy freedoms of speech, religion, etc. without being required to obey the laws that create that freedom.
The rule that creates the freedom of the GPL is that distributed binaries must be accompanied by the source.
If you want to have the freedom to use the source in your product then you have to play by the rules. Linksys is playing by the rules because they want the freedom to use the source in their product.
If you don't want to play by the rules then find another sandbox to play in - just don't expect the same freedom there.
Why should there be any relationship between the size of his dormroom and the throughput of his wireless net?
I often use my wireless connection sitting just a few yards from my access point. Sure beats dealing with a cable.
I don't know if I'd consider that too selfish. Sometimes, code takes a lot of effort to design, write, test etc. And I think some return on that investment is not an unreasonable desire. Is it selfish to go to your employer at the end of the day and ask for a paycheck? A share of the value that both of you have produced together?
Some software I release under the BSD license. I do this when I don't ever want to hear from that particular piece of software again. Some software is released under the GPL. Still other stuff goes out as Public Domain. But please don't tell me I'm selfish because I sometimes want the user community to share back with me what I've shared with them in the first place.
I don't understand how people get into mildly flamey discussions like this. Nobody asked or forced Linksys to use Linux and other GPL'd software as the basis of their AP. They chose to do it, nodoubt for reasons of their own, and initially at least, decided not to stick to the letter with the terms of the license. They could have chosen BSD. They didn't. I'm sure they were aware of the licensing differences at the time.
Now, hypothetically, do you think if they'd used BSD, they would have been good little angels, dilligently having their binaries displaying your copyright notice as clause two mandates? I honestly don't think so. I think they would have just appropriated the source as 'freeware', which it certainly isn't, and then we might have had the same scenes we're seeing here, but a little more low key.
YLFI
P.S.: I like *BSD. I like the license too. But I feel that the attitude behind the license is largely influenced by its tumultuous history intertwined with AT&T up until 1988. I think the fact that the BSD folks got to bootstrap their way up from earlier Unix sources ( and the misappropriation by AT&T of same BSD sources ) has led to a somewhat fuzzier perception of where their work ends and the work of others begins, and a less territorial mentality than the second wave GPL developers.
These are just some thoughts. I apologise for any factual innacuracies in the above... I believe I was still playing cricket in the backyard and jumping off wharves when all this was going on.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
RIGHT... because nobody ever hacks, cracks, or pirates stuff on Windows. Never mind the fact that the most widely pirated piece of software in existance is Windows itself.
Provided you are modifying the unit for your own purposes and not redistributing the Liksys binary code, how exactly does this qualify as pirating?
Personally, I run my business on Linux and have implemented it in several companies where the Linux system itself was replacing a pirated copy of Linux.
I can only assume you are trolling here...
Pirate mentality? If I buy a car I could disassemble it and change some components, right? How is this pirating?
They should've used NetBSD if they don't like the GPL and releasing the source.
Most of the binaries say:
GCC: (GNU) 3.0 20010422 (prerelease) with bcm4710a0 modifications
I don't follow GCC versions that closely. Does that indicate a customized (non-public) version of GCC?
Any reason to think that a current GCC 3.xx won't work with this target hardware?
Which is a Good Thing, actually. Everybody should do what they do best. Linksys is good at making hardware, so let them do that. Open source hackers are good at writing software, so let them do that. All companies have to do is enable those hackers to code for their products, and they'll get all sorts of stuff for free. Company happy, hackers happy, and end-users happy, because they can rest assured that the products can be supported even after the original creator stops supporting them (or never supports them in the first place).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Great news that they released GPL'd source for the wireless router, but now what about the real need, code/drivers for their wireless cards like the WPC54G? I searched /. for info on it and found an old Ask Slashdot thread, but nothing has improved yet. I wnat drivers for the wireless card dang it!
-- DuckWing