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Linux Sourcecode To Minitar Access Point

Posted by timothy on from the that's-not-a-knife-that's-an-access-point dept.

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.

1 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. First Sale Doctrine and GPL by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 5, Interesting
    These kind of cases are going to get interesting, when the following happens.

    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.