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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.
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
I own one of these AP's and there pretty damn good things for the price, and quite compact too. You could probably rip out the board and place it in a Palm III shell :)
Maybe those of use stuck with a Realtek 8180 card? The model number is close enough to 8181 that there is some chance that the 8181 AP driver would work with the 8180 PCMCIA card, with only minor modifications.
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!)
Say no to software patents.
...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.
Link to the product at NewEgg.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Thats why Win2k/WinXp/etc like signed drivers. Being signed means they've been throught MS's tests... MS realized they were getting reamed for alot of lockups that weren't their fault.
So whatever linux is doing wrong, its still doing better then MS.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Thing is....
The binary drivers also aren't platform-independent. I'd imagine the 8180 driver only works on 32-bit x86. Now, for the majority of people, this isn't a problem, but what happens when you buy an Athlon64 notebook and want to run a 64-bit kernel, and the driver won't work....stuck in 32-bit land until Realtek graces you with a driver.
I'm in a similar situation, which is why I bring this up. I own a notebook with a broadcom wireless chip. Dell uses these in their notebooks. For PC users, they use the NDIS wrapper and use the windows driver. It has limited functionality, but it does work. I own an iBook, so the windows driver won't work at all for me. Cisco/Linksys use this chip in their wr54g router/ap, which uses arm, I think? They've relesed the source to the AP....everything *except* the source to the driver for the broadcom chip. Broadcom seems steadfast in its refusal to release the specs on the card, so until someone manages to reverse engineer it or something, there won't be any real free driver for it, and certainly not one for non-pc platforms. So much for running Linux or BSD on my iBook.
No, that is trademarks.
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.
Your gripe doesn't show that the kernel interface sucks, but that binary drivers suck. The kernel API is left somewhat changeable on purpose, because there are major advantages to it and because the disadvantages of it accrue solely on binary-only drivers, which are in Linus' words 'unsupported' and not to be encouraged anyway.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I don't follow you.
Seems pretty simple to me. If you take GPL code, use it in a product, you have to make the source available to the public. (Company Y only, does not equal the public, invalidating your claim "completely satisfied the GPL obligation")
In your example, it seems pretty clear to me that anyone who requests it, should legally be able to obtain a copy of the modified source from Company X.
Company X is entitled to charge a fair fee for materials...but that's it.
Your point number 3. is completely false.
The GPL is not satisfied at all. The source had to be made publicly available, not to just a 3rd party, as in your example.
despite your convoluted explanation it's quite simple.
Your parent is incorrect about point 3. But you're also incorrect. The GPL does not require that you give the source to the public, it requires that either you transmit the source with the object code or you make an offer to give the source to any third party.
But it's hard to take someone up on an offer you haven't received. And company Y is not distributing the object code noncommercially, so they have to either provide their customers with the source code, or provide their own offer. Customers of company Y would not know of the offer of the source from Company X.
Your parent is incorrect with his point 3, because the GPL compels Company X to distribute the source and object codes under the GPL. Thus, Company Y must agree to those terms, and it's bound to include the source code with the object code, or offer the code.
Need a Catering Connection
This loophole doesn't exist. If you look at the GPL, it states that a written offer for the source code must exist that offers the entire source to any third party to eligible to receive it, i.e. someone receiving a binary copy of the software.
A ROM is merely a storage place for a binary file. By distributing software on ROM, you aren't exploiting any hole at all in the GPL. The hole is not there.
If you were to buy a piece of hardware with GPL'd software on it from E-bay, you would have to be extended the right to the source from the one who originally modified it.
In your example, Company Y would be off the hook, but Company X would still have to provide the source to those who owned the devices.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
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.
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.
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.
In any case, they wrote the code, they get to set the priorities. If they don't care about people who use their code, that is their right. If they think it's more important for them that people release their modifications and play by the rules they set, then that is their right. You, as a user, have no other rights than what they granted you with the license.
Sure, you can whine all you want that you aren't happy that the developers want to uphold the license THEY chose for a product THEY wrote, but it doesn't change the fact that if the developers purpose with releasing the software isn't to serve your need they are unlikely to care.
You seem to live under the delusion that being a "user" makes you inherently valuable. Being a user makes you valuable to a developer only to the extent the developers goal is to build a large userbase, or to the extent you provide useful feedback (depending on the developers definition of whats useful to him/her). For many projects that makes users valuable. Many projects DO want to reach out to as many as possible. But for many, users that are not also developers and contributors have little or no value.
You bring up being "user friendly" implying that "user friendly" means "usable to people that aren't developers" while people that aren't developers might not be part of the developers wanted user base. Do you complain that your mom find "vi" too difficult? Do I complain that I find "vi" too difficult? Well, perhaps sometimes, but mostly I just use something else.
I think a problem here is that there are a many more possible versions of the linux kernel floating around than windows; it's easy to write and distribute a driver package that can cope with a few different kernel versions when there are such a limited number of platforms to write against, even including service packs.
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.