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Linux Sourcecode To Minitar Access Point
mcbridematt writes "Minitar sells a rebadged Edimax Linux based-802.11b Access Point in Australia (no FCC ID yet) for a relatively cheap price (under AUS $100 in places). These access points are based around the Realtek 8181 wireless-system-on-chip design, have 8MB flash rom, and run a 2.4 series Linux kernel. After requests from the community to get the kernel sources, which resulted in a incomplete sourcecode release, we finally have (allegedly) complete and GPL compliant Linux kernel sources for this fine Access Point. Special thanks to chuna, serialmonkey and screwball at Minitar for making this happen, especially after they ran into arguments with their OEM and Realtek over this." From the attached forum discussion, you can see there's disagreement about whether the source code release is as complete as it should be.
Who is actually going to care? Will any of you buy this product now, and hack around with the source?
Before I kick myself in the arse over my usage of "full" in this story, there ain't any wireless code in there. It appears to be for the purpose of getting Linux to run on the damn thing. (Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these AUS $100 things blah blah..)
:(
The RTl8181 driver for Linux has been a seperate binary driver for some time
...is kindof a cool thing one can do if able to update the flash memory on accesspoints.
Check out http://reseaucitoyen.be/index.php?OpenWrt (french) which is a project to run a olsr implementation (www.olsr.org) in a LinkSys-Wrt54G which also runs Linux.
"Yes, I know that there already is a binary driver for the 8180, but it is very flaky, and rather picky about the kernels and distributions it agrees to work with... (as binary drivers usually are, alas!)"
And yet this is the future people want Linux to have.
But big deal. The source is going to be 99.8% unchanged from the previously public version, and the 0.2% remaining is just going to be bootstrap code and code to work around bugs in the specific hardware, etc. Further, I bet nobody actually does anything interesting with it now that they've got the source. After all, the HW's only good for one thing, and it already does it.
Suing every commodity router builder that comes down the pike with a product like this, which has essentially zero software value added in it, is just going to make some manufacturers squeamish about using Linux inside. And I want them to use Linux, because I, as a consumer, would rather have that than the lower quality, higher cost alternatives that exist.
Looking at it another way, if the OSS community sues over these dinky issues, where they get no great new software to show for it, they'll lose out on luring some big fish to use OSS plus their own super-duper-multimedia-software, which the community could then sue for and actually get something out of it.
P.S. For those that say "but we might get a driver for the buggy chipset that we've only got a buggy closed source driver for now" - will you listen to yourselves? Support another chipset vendor, you twits!
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Now if we only could get the mplayer code for the KISS players too...
sorry to say, but any company that abuses the gpl isn't getting my hard-earned dollar, even if they are forced to cough up the code at some later point. i see what you're saying about the realteck, but i don't think that can justify buying one of these things from such a shady company
Link to the product at NewEgg.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
On a more serious note, that price IS low enough to paper an entire city. I'd like to see someone do it.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
" Don't get me wrong. I think that, under GPL, people are fully entitled to ask for the source for this thing."
Then why rant about it? Either they are, or they aren't. There's no middle ground.
"But big deal. The source is going to be 99.8% unchanged from the previously public version, and the 0.2% remaining is just going to be bootstrap code and code to work around bugs in the specific hardware, etc. Further, I bet nobody actually does anything interesting with it now that they've got the source. After all, the HW's only good for one thing, and it already does it."
Kind of hard to tell without the source code, now isn't it? Besides your "it already does it" applies as much to the big battles as does the small.
"Suing every commodity router builder that comes down the pike with a product like this, which has essentially zero software value added in it, is just going to make some manufacturers squeamish about using Linux inside. And I want them to use Linux, because I, as a consumer, would rather have that than the lower quality, higher cost alternatives that exist."
The reasons NOT to do something will always outnumber to reasons to. And I wouldn't call the firmware of "essentially zero software value" since in it's absence the hardware is of no value whatsoever.
"Looking at it another way, if the OSS community sues over these dinky issues, where they get no great new software to show for it, they'll lose out on luring some big fish to use OSS plus their own super-duper-multimedia-software, which the community could then sue for and actually get something out of it."
I wasn't aware that having control over you hardware was a "dinky" issue. Thanks for the heads up.
"P.S. For those that say "but we might get a driver for the buggy chipset that we've only got a buggy closed source driver for now" - will you listen to yourselves? Support another chipset vendor, you twits!"
"
P.S.S. Running away from a problem will not only not solve that problem, it makes you weak when it comes to dealing with bigger problems.
You are wrong on that part. So what if the code on your product is GPL'ed? You are still SELLING the HARDWARE, all you are doing is allowing people to modify it at will. This will in fact INCREASE your sales to the computer community as they can now roll out their own custom solutions and not be bogged down by the compiled software.
The GPL is not a new idea, it's principle is based in history. People thoughout the centuries have written down their scientific breakthroughs, finds and other discoveries. They believed that by sharing what they found and developed would help the world. They are still credited with the finds, but now everyone has access to them. Why are computers so different? Because money and companies are involved. Stupid managers and officers all see, Propritary CODE MUST NOT SHARE, when in fact if they made good products, GPL'd the code they would make money.
You see even though you GPL the code does not mean that your competitor can steal it, they too are bound by it and must make their changes public, which in turn helps you. WHOA!!! The GPL is a idea based on the sharing of knowledge for the benefit of the whole world.
Later,
Arathres
stainless steel
"This is a prime example of how the GPL is going to continue to hurt Linux. Going after a company like this for violating Linux's overly-restrictive license is not going to promote widespread corporate adoption - rather, it will push them towards proprietary solutions."
You wish us to accept your premise? OK. accept this one then. Going after customers for violating overly restrictive EULA's (BSA) is going to hurt proprietary chances in the marketplace, and push customers towards OSS solutions.
Now I leave it to you to match reality with the above.
Eventually people will get the message and either build/buy propretary solutions or adhere to the licenses of the Free Software they choose. Someone should have known that putting a statically compiled in wireless driver into a commercial product means one of two things, yank as a mistake on sight and say sorry, or release the source. If you build a product on Free Software, you should understand what you are doing and if you are not planning on releasing everything you do you had better be real careful you don't contaminate what you want to "keep"! I see it as a good thing, as it reinforces the "community" element of Free Software and reassurres people who might put serious work into Free Software that it won't be hijacked by others who won't follow the rules (well don't know what would happen with GPL violations/violators in China, for example, at present).
BTW I only want Linux to gain widespread acceptance if it is still Free, the video card market is where this battle is really being fought at present though with Daniel Stone's announcment that XFree86 has been forked (I submitted a first story to slashdot about this 9 days ago and it's still pending), not once but twice (by X.org and freedesktop.org) perhaps a shake-up is coming.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
"and that's what Linux people want, right?" Contrary to what those companies would like you to believe, many of the "Linux people" just want an operating system that they can fiddle with and can modify freely. It isn't about acceptance, or profit, or popularity contests, or usability. If keeping software like this free in every instance isn't your priority, then go use one of the wonderful BSD licensed operating systems and stop telling everyone else what the purpose of the linux kernel is. Linux isn't about sacrificing the freedom Linus put his kernel under (along with every person who ever contributed to it) for some semblance of acceptance and self-esteem.
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to block G4T0r spyware crap is insignificant next to the power of the Source.
Don't try to frighten us with your coder's ways. Your sad devotion to that irrelevant OS has not helped you sell routers; we all know that Linux is a niche market
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Remember, the open source will be with you, always
Listen to Vader
Exactly... The GPL is way too "viral" to be taken seriously in a corporate environment.
Rubbish. It's a prime example of how a corporation saw something for nothing, took it, and is renegging on the deal it engaged it. Few people, if any, in the Linux community got anything out of them using our work, but they got a complete operating system that would have otherwise cost them a shitload to develop or buy. You can bitch about the GPL being restrictive if you want, but all that's really being asked is to give as well as take. Except instead of just asking nicely, it's a legal requirement.
I'm guessing your not a Linux user or contributor, judging by your last remark. Most of us don't give a toss about Linux widespread acceptance, we just want Linux to work better for us - if others like it too, then that's a bonus. We're certainly not doing it to make other companies wealthy on our backs with nothing in return, even if it is a token gesture in comparison.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
1. Company X makes the guts of one of these routers or access points. They modify GPL'ed software, and put it on ROM in the device.
2. Company X sells these things to OEMs, who put it in boxes, add their applications in a separate ROM, and sell it to customers. Company Y is one of these OEMs.
3. Company X includes the full machine readable source of the GPL'ed ROM with the board they sell to company Y. Note: Company X has completely satisfied their GPL obligation. They are completely off the hook as far as anyone who acquires the software from company Y is concerned.
4. Now it gets interesting. Company Y takes the board with the ROM, and sells it to an end user. Note that company Y is allowed to do this without the permission of the copyright holder, because of the first sale doctine (see footnote).
5. Because company Y didn't do anything other than what is allowed by copyright law, they are under no GPL obligation to provide ROM source to the end user.
6. Note the end result: no one has a GPL obligation to provide source to the end user! Company X satisfied all their GPL obligations in their dealings with company Y, and company Y distributed in a way that falls outside the GPL.
Note: this isn't as big a loophole in GPL as it might seem, since it only applies to things like ROMs, where someone like company Y receives a particular copy, and distributes that particular copy to the end user.
Footnote: the fair use doctine, codified at 17 USC 109 if I recall correctly, basically states that the legal owner of a particular copy of a copyright work can sell that copy, without that violating that copyright owner's exclusive right to distribute or authorize distribution of the work. This is what allows used bookstores, for example. Without the first sale doctrine, every time a book changed hands, it would require the publisher's permission!
This is also what lets you sell a used embedded device on eBay without incuring any GPL obligation if it turns out the device uses GPL'ed code, so I wouldn't say this loophole in GPL is a bad thing. If you just go down to BestBuy and buy a router, you should be able to resell that without worrying about whether or not the manufacturer used any GPL'ed code in the thing.
I call bullshit on this one. No one forced this corp to use Linux - they could have easily bought or licensed or developed an OS other than Linux.
But they CHOSE to use Linux. And in doing so, they adopted the GPL.
Release the damn code. I released mine, now it's your turn.
If you don't - then here's a tip - yank that product, and reissue it with some other OS. If you don't, then suffer the consequences you assholes.
"But the current way is just stupid and hampers Linux' adoption in the less techie areas."
You know? I seriously amused. We (the community) didn't use to get these "critiques" from armchair programmers. We went on our way, merrily developing great software e.g."(fantastic reliability, good uptimes, reasonable security, etc.)" and then the mainstream got fed up with MS (and others) and suddenly noticed Linux. Now we have people telling us that "we" should change to fit the world that corporations built (the same one's people complain about), instead of corporations realizing what a good thing OSS is (principles and all) and that it works because of what it is, not in spite of what it is. If Linux is being "hampered", maybe you should look closely at what is "really" hampering it?
The GPL serves a purpose (though I'm not sure what)
Perhaps you should read it some time. The GPL is a license that software authors employ to grant others the rights to use and modify their software codes. In other words, if I spend a year developing some software, I can then distribute it under the GPL. The specific advantage of the GPL as compared to BSD-style licenses is that it gives other free software developers (who I presumably share some common interests with) an advantage over commercial competitors who might take my hard work and turn it into a commercial product that competes with me.
Companies developing routers have a simple choice: write the software from scratch, buy commercial software, or use free software. If they buy commercial software, they must respect those license conditions imposed. If they use free software, they must also respect the license. If it's GPL, that means making the source code available.
A business has no right to take GPL software (representing, I remind you, a significant investment of someone's time) and break the license. They should do what everyone else has to do in business: invest themselves in their own products.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
...is not going to promote widespread corporate adoption - rather, it will push them towards proprietary solutions.
Quite frankly, so what!? If I release software I have written under the GPL, then I expect the terms of that licence to be met. If some corporation wants to take something I, or others, have put their blood sweat and tears into without giving anything back, then tough. If they don't like being required to give back, then they can find some other solution to their problem. If they can't find another solution, then they must play by the rules. They have NO legal or moral right to use someone elses property in a way other than that person allows.
I would like to see the widespread acceptance of Linux, but I am not willing to see that happen at the expense of what Linux and the GPL stand for. If people go soft on enforcing the GPL now, then its perceived validity will be eroded in the future, and we'll have more problems than we started with. If this slows down widespread acceptance, then so be it. If widespread acceptance never materialises because corporations don't like the philosophy of the GPL, then so be it.
There is no reason to be scared of the GPL. If a company tries to abuse it, then they should expect to come under fire. If a company plays fair and release what they should, they can still keep closed whatever else they desire. They simply don't have the right to use people's work in a way that is illegal.
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
Could you explain 'overly-restrictive' please?
I'm pretty sure it's exactly as restrictive as the authors want it to be. If you or Realtek don't like, it, go and write your own damn OS and license it however you feel is best.
Speaking for myself and probably a lot of others, I don't give a rats arse how accepted Linux is by anyone else, so long as it exists and is Free.
Cthulhu loves you.
Wouldn't Mobilix get sued by Mobil as well?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The real issue here (I think), is that it would hurt Realtek more in the long run when there is no sourced driver available for their own hardware.
Without acceptance into Linux, people are more likely to avoid their hardware when choosing a Linux set-up.
So who's the real loser going to be in this situation?
Answer: Realtek, and their own customers!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
"Normally I wouldn't bother replying to an AC, but since you got modded up..."
.sig! Spreading the .sig was the sole point of the post."
Yes It is a shame to have someone like an AC point out the fallacies in your argument. Would you feel better if I registered? Would your argument be any more correct if I did?
"So unless you've got some oddball economic theory involving a hidden subsidy, we'll just go with the generally accepted price==value. "
WE? (Got a couple friends in there?) Don't agree with you. There is indeed a hidden price in the creation of firmware. There's nothing "oddball" about that.
"Unless you think there's some secret high value code in what, externally, is (yawn) just another access point?"
It's the principle of the matter, not the "dollar value".
"Also, you didn't rebut my
One I can't see your sig.
Two so all you was doing was showboating? Why am I not surprised?
Well you DID get a cheap router out of the deal. Imagine if companies didn't use Linux for routers, opting to develop the OS on their own or purchase it. How much do you think that would add to the cost of each router?
You have the WRONG last name to be in this business man ;)
De minimis non curat lex.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Yes, you can. The offer must be open to everyone who has a copy of the binary that it accompanies. This is why the GPL says your friend must give you a copy of the offer along with a copy of the binary---so you can take advantage of it.
And that is our problem how? They based their business upon breaking copyright (because that's what you do if use GPL code without complying) and are thus planted in the same category as people who copy and sell CDs.
Exactly how is it driving them out of business if they comply with the GPL? Why should they be allowed to freeload on other people's efforts? They are not exactly giving away free routers to everyone who's a Linux developer.
Doesn't everyone require the publishers permission when they sell their books? Oh wait...I forgot, this is 2004. I'll repost in a few years when the preceding statement is true. :-)
I think what gets overlooked sometimes is that while GPL'd software may be free of cost that doesn't make it free of value. And this is where it gets tricky: instead of being a financial asset it is an idealogical and philosophical asset. But lets just leave that part out of it, it IS an asset, both to the individual programmer and the community they have given it to.
Then it is our responsibility to protect our intellectual assets, or do we forfeit our rights to them?
Commodity router builders have at there disposal A LOT of options, they could pay someone to code there own software (there is a cost in doing business isn't there?), they could license a proprietary os, they could even use a bsd based solution. But if the best they can do is steal the existing assets of the free software community I don't have much sympathy for them. And why should you?
Quack, quack.
Seems to me, the only reason there is a GPL is because it's legally impossible to /give something away/ without some asshole hijacking your ideas business style so they can control them for profit. ....you get to take the code, why is it so hard for them to share back - the product is not as valuable if it can't be remotely deactivated (abandoning support to force future products down our throats, and turning functional hardware into trash) /from/ the law" .... not meaning 'assistance'.
I think he should have said "If you want protection
The Minitar AP is hardly the first AP for such an issue to surface. My Linksys WRT54G wireless router is also Linux based, which has been great as it has given birth to some interesting firmware and OS variations.
The concern for drivers isn't as big as you would think. Why spend AU$60 or 70 bucks on a realtek wireless card when for AU$80 (in our recent Melbourne Wireless bulk buy) you can have a complete, standalone, managed network device. Around our community wireless group, these devices are very popular for their possibility of expanding their functionality to include routing and fault tolerence technologies at a fraction of the cost of a commercial solution which we neither want or can afford. This is also helpful as we can implement peer-to-peer IBSS mode which is better suited for point to point links. Additionally, it allows us to build a wireless node for $80 an interface (excluding antenna and cabling) simply by pkugging in an extra device into a switch or hub.
I believe the common issue with releasing wireless drivers for open sourced OS's is that the cards can be reprogrammed to use wireless channels which may violate their telecommunications (eg, austel, FCC) certification by operating in frequency ranges of which they are not permitted.
I think that due to the cost of APs. vs using a PC as an AP these days, especially in running costs, that the protection of infrastructure-mode AP capabilities is really pointless anyway.
I live in university rezzies, but we're away from the main campus so the only internet options are ADSL or dialup.
I'd like to share my ADSL plan with other students without running cables, but am sure that if I declare open slather, everyone will leech until there's no bandwidth left...
Looking over the specs, it seems the minitar might be meaty enough to run some sort of quota system?
I'd rather not have a desktop running 24/7 just to share an internet connection...
Anyone think this is possible? The a$100 price point is about right...
Since these linux drivers are responsible for so much revenue to these big companies, they would much rather gobble you up for a couple dozen million (chump change really), than deal with the publicity of a lawsuit.
Of course you need to have a backup plan incase they don't bite. You need to protect your "IP" so you issue press releases like you were the AP, telling anyone and everyone that you are suing these evil corporations, and you have expensive lawyers. Sell your stock like mad, when dumb people buy your story..
If they ask "what IP do you have?" Loudly shout "errr, umm, Look at that monkey over there!", and make sure that by the time they turn back around, your expensive lawyer is there with lawsuit in hand..
I don't need an MBA or a Law Degree, everything I need to know i learned from Slashdot and the litigious bastards.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
You should toggle CONFIG_MODVERSIONS in your kernel compilation .config. (or RedHat should, or whoever makes your kernel):
CONFIG_MODVERSIONS:
Usually, modules have to be recompiled whenever you switch to a new kernel. Saying Y here makes it possible, and safe, to use the same modules even after compiling a new kernel; this requires the program modprobe. All the software needed for module support is in the modutils package (check the file Documentation/Changes for location and latest version). NOTE: if you say Y here but don't have the program genksyms (which is also contained in the above mentioned modutils package), then the building of your kernel will fail. If you are going to use modules that are generated from non-kernel sources, you would benefit from this option. Otherwise it's not that important. So, N ought to be a safe bet.
By that logic, an OS without memory protection or preemptive multitasking is not to be blamed for lock ups - applications are.
Maybe device drivers a bit different because some operations can cause a hardware malfunction that will bring down the machine no matter what the OS does. But I bet most crashes are due to more trivial reasons - a driver corrupting kernel memory, waiting forever for a failed operation, taking 100% of CPU time an so on.
There is no excuse why device drivers can not have their own protected memory space, swap to virtual memory, only be able to access mapped memory and I/O ports they are supposed to use, communicate with the kernel through regular system calls and receive queued interrupts by reading from sockets. There is no reason device drivers can not be implemented in Java.
Have real-time concerns or chicken-and-egg problems (disk drivers will have a hard time using virtual memory)? Fine, implement that driver - or just the portion that needs to be real time - in kernel. Just don't tell me my Palm USB driver needs to corrupt kernel memory and crash the system.
What we need is a new law that makes it illegal for hardware manufacturers to keep driver details secret. If you want to sell me a fancy wireless adaptor, graphics card, sound card or whatever, fine; but you have to give me all the information I need to write a driver for anything that I might want to interface to it.
It used to be so, back in the days when a printer came with a big thick manual explaining how to do various textual and graphical effects, even pulse timings and voltages for the interface. And everyone thought that information was part of the operating instructions. Sometime between then and now, it went sour; probably we didn't notice, but documentation went from hacker-friendly, to (non-hacker)-friendly, to non-(hacker-friendly). Nowadays, it seems printer manuals just say "plug in the USB cable and install the Windows software" -- and manufacturers are treating the important stuff like how to fire the second "red" nozzle down as though it were some sort of nuclear secret.
Well, it isn't. If you buy a piece of hardware you have every right to make use of that hardware, and if the manufacturer will not tell you how to do so then they are obstructing your enjoyment of your own property. At the very least, the owner of a particular device should -- by sole virtue of ownership -- be automatically privy to any "secret" it may contain; ideally, such information would be in the public domain by law.
And sod the whingeing about "competitors having access to your 'proprietary information'". Your competitors already pay people to reverse-engineer your products, and you will get access to their "proprietary information".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
trolls and misguided posts. The issue here is not the GPL it is that hey CHOSE to use it. Thereby having to agree to it's terms. All other issues are irrelevant. As this post is redundant.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
X can not impose a contract on Y not to do so, because it would violate the GPL. And from the point of view of Y, all distributing the source would do is create some competition to X, which can only be good by lowering the prices. And besides, all one would need to do is buy one chip from X and make the code public.
I guess the only case to worry about is when X and Y are actually controlled by the same people, for the specific purpose of flouting the GPL. This is the case to be sorted out in court (IANAL), but most probably X and Y will lose.
Here's a hypothetical situation i haven't seen an answer for... suppose I invent a new language, lets call it 'R', which is completely impossible to understand without documentation. Suppose I heavily encumber this language with patents, NDA's, etc so that nobody can use it except me (and anyone else who pays me lots of money :).
Now suppose I take some GPL code, and modify it. One of these modifications is to port it to 'R'. If I then release and sell the binary, and distribute the (now unreadable, undecipherable, and useless to anyone else) source code, am I still fulfilling my obligations under the GPL?
To take it a step further, suppose 'R' is an intermediate bytecode style language? I guess at that point you've really crossed the line though.
saying that letting companies get away with not releasing source isn't a big deal haven't got the faintest idea. if you don't defend copyrights you lose them. these companys are trying to take a free ride. if not releasing source become acceptable then when the time comes we really do want something, we will have a major battle on our hands. better if everyone just gets used to coughing up their damn code and sticks to the bloody rules.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Right idea, wrong focus. It's not that we got a cheap router out of the deal. They got a cheap OS out of the deal. Linux is equivalent to millions of dollars in saved licensing fees. This gives them a huge market advantage over their competition. Their only obligation was to make all modifications available under the terms of the GPL.
Except they reneged on their obligations. They were happy to profit from Linux but they're not so keen to pay the pricetag. Too bad for them. If they want to keep their code secret they can go pay $20/device for an embedded VxWorks license like all the other companies do. They deserve no sympathy and no defence. Linux isn't a free-for-all; it's a give-as-you-receive.
They should have used BSD if they wanted to plunder without giving back.
Wrong.
There's really nothing more to add.
Who wants minitar, when you can get GNU tar with a lot more options? Even GNU tar can do backup over network! There might even be a --wireless-net=yes in the next release.
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Since 2004-01-01 there is a pre-alpha proyect to develop a clean, GPL compliant port of the Linux kernel and tools to Realtek's RTL8181 "802.11b wireless gateway controller" system-on-chip, used in a variety of wireless access point and gateway appliances. You can join the proyect: rtl8181.sourceforge.net/
Read the GPL, it answers your question.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
De minimis non curat lex.
...
Ahhh.. I remember how Law School taught how to remember that:
There was a young law student called Rex
Who had diminutive organs of sex.
When charged with exposure,
He replied, with composure,
"De minimis non curat lex."
(The law does not concern itself with trifles)
Of course there's no FCC ID - they sell it in Australia.
No FCC ID required if you don't offer it for sale within the US. One area where American rules and regulations still apply only within the US...
Except that for many things the hardware is (considered) pretty generic, and the companies feel their value is in the driver or other value-adding software on top. If you have written a super-duper driver for your card, you don't want another company being able to port it to their cheap knock off, but more or less identical, card.
You forgot the part where Company X acquires the GPL software in the first place. They did NOT buy it in the sense that one buys a book. They licensed it. In doing so, they bound themselves to all the terms and conditions of the license. I strongly doubt that companies like Microsoft would look kindly on the Rule of First Sale being applied to its software licenses. For that matter, neither would Company X.
Quit your wanna-be lawyer BS and help these guys out!
http://rtl8181.sourceforge.net/
There has a lot of stability issues and minitar maintainers are applying patches pepole is sending without knowing what the hell is going on.
DON'T BUY THOSE CARDS.
Yeah, they're very cheap 802.11b cards. But if you cannot make'm work... they're cheap useless cards.
The melbourne wireless group just bought a bunch of these things for AU$80 (US$60) last week.
There is a small header for a serial port (might be ttl level). They have put out a build kit that will let you rebuild the thing in theory but I haven't checked it. I'm not sure you can build a real release version and I may want to backup the rom before I start messing around with it. The binary modules include standard drivers and some other stuff but its small and has symbols so it may not be too hard to figure out what its doing.
As soon as I get someone listed in the linux kernel to provide me a license to reverse engineer their GNUed code, then I'll start looking at just what is there and what is missing. Remember that if the code is binary only, it may be a DMCA violation to touch it with a debugger. Of course that doesn't apply downunder (well maybe it does) however local law does allow reverse engineering in several cases (thanks to a y2k law).
The device does run linux and its a bit slow doing it too. Its low on ram and flash but what do you expect for such a cheap device.
Now why is it no one has a decent decompiler for gcc? A few people have made some major headway into this over the years but they all seem to stop short and never share their work. Thats not the open source way to do things.
I'd be happy to see specs for the 8181. It's not as if Intel (think Centrino) is going to learn anything from them. RealTek hardware and/or software has traditionally sucked (random limitations, such as the lack of word-boundary DMA on the 8139s up to rev D, and flakiness). I don't think that counts as a trade secret.
Either way, real specs would give us FOSS vandals enough of an informational leg-up to get a rudimentary driver launched, which sooner or later will be more reliable and efficient than the closed commercial one. It's to RealTek's advantage to have that happen - unless they're both short-sighted (possible) and selling said secret code to developers for big bucks.
As to the gadget itself: wireless connectivity and programmable. How you say, remote sensor? Remote waldo? Cheap 802.11 camera cluster? Sometimes it's much cheaper to buy a working gadget and hack it than to buy the bits and build one.
Case in point, this here tiny optical scroll mouse cost me AUD$23 retail at BigW; the USB interface chip alone is nearly AUD$50 retail, then I have to buy and solder up a plug and cable, house the sucker and so on. If I wanted a few bits of USB digital input, it's simpler and cheaper to buy a mouse and wire the sensors across the button-switches than to build my own device from scratch. Simplifies testing, too. Who knows, the mouse chip might have some digital output as well if I'm lucky and can find docs for it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The GPL is so strict and so easily interpreted a million different ways. I don't understand why anyone would choose Linux to develop a product on. To me it would make much more sense to start out with BSD since the BSD license is so friendly to commercial activities and leaves no room for interpitation. Basically BSD license is "HERE do what you will". Now that is freedom! GPL is anti-freedom.
Look at the success of Darwin / Mac OS X. Apple has chosen to release the source code to Darwin even though they don't have to. Yes, it's self centered in that they get free development for future operating systems but what business is not self centered?
Linux Zealots all shout HOoooRAY when someone uses Linux on a embedded device, heck ANY device, but then bitch when they realize that the company actually wants to make money. It is this type of thinking that will keep Linux from ever being widely deployed in embedded devices. Some day soon people will realize that it's not worth it and install BSD on their BOX and call it whatever they want and never look back.
My thoughts on Linux and the fact that it is GPL is that it has been locked into being a hobby OS from now until it goes the way of the Amiga (see previous article about it posted today on SD).
As someone that has to make the choice of what operating systems get installed on servers, etc, I find myself opting for BSD over Linux every time. For all Linux Zealots that may flame this posting please tell me what does BSD lack that Linux doesn't? On the other hand I offer that Linux lacks freedom that BSD offers in it's parent license.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
It also makes it easier to abstract things for portability if you want to.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Just look up first sale doctrine or ask a lawyer.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I bet Edimax wishes they had chosen one of the BSD alternatives instead.
"I believe the common issue with releasing wireless drivers for open sourced OS's is that the cards can be reprogrammed to use wireless channels which may violate their telecommunications (eg, austel, FCC) certification by operating in frequency ranges of which they are not permitted."
This red herring again. Are you aware that is possible to design in limits that would keep this from happening?
It depends on the interpertation of "normal environment", which can reasonably mean "the community of R programmers", in which case it's no big deal. On the other hand, some people take it to an extreme, even pointing out that open-source projects that rely on non-oss tools (like Windows apps that rely on Visual C++) are a violation.
The second case (bytecode language) is clearcut and is the same as if you released the software in binary format and object code format.
Given that you do not program the program in object code/bytecode it is not the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" (see section 3 of the GPL) and thus doesn't qualifie as source code (Next tried to release a modified version of GCC supporting a mix of Objective C and C++ with only the object files available and when the FSF lawyers explained to them why it didn't comply with the GPL they also released the source code).
As for your hypothetical language, let's make the example more concrete and say that you ported the Linux kernel to INTERCAL.
One of the properties of INTERCAL is to be almost completely impossible to understand any complex (and even simple one) pieces of code written in it even WITH the documentation.
If you then went and improved that port *in INTERCAL* and released the INTERCAL* source under the GPL you would comply with it (the catch being that the normal Linux kernel development would leave you in the dust through both the number of people working on it vs the number of peole working on the INTERCAL version AND through the slower pace of development when using INTERCAL).
However, if you modified the source code in C and then used a C->INTERCAL code translator then the C version would be the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" and the one that you have to disclose (using the C->INTERCAL translator is similar to using an obfuscator before releasing the code under the GPL which is a no-no for the same reason).
Now you might ask how is the community supposed to know whether you modify it in C or in INTERCAL (imagining that the C->INTERCAL translator produces similar output when given two similar input files).
That is a good question and if I suspected that someone was doing it (which I would if someone claimed to be able to develop as complicated a piece of software as the Linux kernel in INTERCAL**) and refused to release the C source (claiming that it doesn't exist) then I would sue them (assuming I had the money and it was my code of course) and in my complaint I would explain all the reasons why I believe that they are in fact developing in C and propose that an easy test as to whether they develop in INTERCAL or not is to have one of their engineer do some more or less trivial development not known in advance so they can't rehearse and trivial enough to take a few minutes to an hour to do in C so one of my guys or me can concurrently develop it in C to compare while their guy tries to do it in INTERCAL.
If their guy (which should be the best INTERCAL guru they have on staff if they are not stupid) is not able to code these small(ish) features in a reasonable time frame it should be much easier to argue that the super duper features that they developed in their released version could not have been developed in INTERCAL given their manpower resource and the time taken to develop it and should be pretty solid ground to get a search warrant for their computers.
Also, given that I will be suing them for copyright infringement and they will respond "not so, we have the permission of the GPL" and I will respond "no, you don't since you don't respect this part of it" they will have to prove that they respect this part of it (the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" part, that is) by proving that they are making modifications to it in INTERCAL which can be done by the test described above.
Of course IANAL... but I guess you get the idea of why trying to do that would be a bad idea (without counting the triple damage award the plaintiff would get because if they jumped through so many hoops to infringe one the plaintiff's copyright and not get caught AND knew they had to release the code it most certainly wasn't accidental infringement).
* Yeah, I know, INTERCAL is a language that LIKES TO SHOUT.
** N
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
And sod the whingeing about "competitors having access to your 'proprietary information'". Your competitors already pay people to reverse-engineer your products, and you will get access to their "proprietary information".
That argument will NOT cut ice with corporations. Reverse-engineering costs a LOT - both in money and in time-to-market. And corporate executives, who have to actually PAY for software (and other) development have a real feel for just HOW MUCH it costs and HOW LONG it takes.
Once the knockoff is on the market they have to lower their prices, so every quarter they hold that off is another quarterly report with a high, rather than a low, profit margin.
If you want to convince them you have to show them how using open source gives them an advantage that more than compensates.
Two big ones are:
- It cuts their development costs to a pittance compared to doing it all themselves or buying the bulk of it. (This means that they don't have as large an investment to recover before it gets cloned and the price is driven down to commodity levels. In turn that means they can establish themselves and be ready to keep making money at commodity pricing levels.)
- It gets them to market much sooner (so even if the tail gets chopped off the neck is lengthened.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The parent poster has already answered that: a devl can do it for his own personal use, or he can do it just for fun, etc. A userbase does not have to be his primary concern. And even of devls that do like to have a big userbase for their prog, it's still up to the devl to determine the value of the users (as users, of course).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Point 3 of the GPL reiterates several times that the sourcecode/offer must "accompany the work". It this means the sourcecode/offer is "part of" the work, them we would be happy for Company Y to distribute the exact work that Company X gave them, as the enduser would still receive the sourcecode/offer. If Company Y removes the sourcecode/offer, it becomes a derivative work, and they GPL does apply to them, and they must provide the sourcecode/offer themselves.
Why, pray tell, am I on your foes list? What did I do to you?
Un-news
Well, there was an unusual set of icons by your username: friend of friend and also enemy of friend, so I was curious enough to click the little grey icon. Your username doesn't help, and a quick look at your latest comments probably showed Troll, Troll, Flamebait, Offtopic or the like. That's the main criteria I use if I ever set +foe on anyone.
Cthulhu loves you.
OK. Cool enough. Mostly just curious. I used to friend my freaks, but I've been unfriending them since my fans list is growing. The whole Zoo concept is kind of a game for me.
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and elswhere You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy
"Me: Hey, Company X. Can I have some copies of that cool app you've got."
"X: Sure, but that will take my time and effort, which I value at $1000/hr."
Whether you get I get a competetive price or not is neither here nor there.
Company X is only allowed to be paid for distributing the application, much like a courier, or to offer warranty insurance. If Company X is "selling" the GPL product, THEY are violating the rights of the copyright holders, who can sue. And what damages might any one of the copyright holders ask for...? Perhaps just "show us your source" - and court costs.
Company X might be "selling" is very expensive ROM or CD media. They can NOT be "selling" the program therein contained using only the the rights granted to them by the GPL. There is then no problem with the consumer re-selling that same physical CD."
Equivalently, Company Y can only be selling the router hardware. They can NOT selling the Program therein contained as the interface, because nowhere have they obtained the right to do this. They are merely distributing the program within their hardware. Again, there is nothing contradicting the Right Of First Sale in preventing the consumer from reselling the hardware device.