Blowing TiVo's Lid

An anonymous reader writes "Taking things apart is just plain fun, but there's also a lot to learn about how to build a foolproof Linux-based appliance. Break out your Torx drivers and take a closer look at TiVo's inner Linux workings. Examining the TiVo system reveals how one company made the transition from desktop operating system to embedded system."

Comments

didn't i read this 2.5 weeks ago?!?

[H8X55]

didn't i read this 2.5 weeks ago?!?

first posted on slashdot 7/6/05 - dang!

Re:open source?

[iabervon]

The license for the Linux kernel says:

NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".

The license for glibc says:

We use this license for certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries into non-free programs.

TiVo's obligation is to provide source so that you can put together the base system that the TiVo software runs on (meaning that taking it apart is not particularly necessary), but they only have to include changes they made to the base system, not complete programs they wrote (and they probably chose supported hardware, formats, and so forth, so that they wouldn't have to write special drivers).