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Amazon Releases Kindle Source Code

Posted by timothy on from the use-the-forks-luke dept.

MackieChan writes with a piece of news that slipped past earlier this month: "Barnes & Noble receives a lot of credit from the Slashdot community for standing up to Microsoft and for allowing the Nook to be so easy to root, but perhaps Amazon releasing the source code to the Kindle will help it gain back supporters it lost after remotely removing ebooks."

7 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. All of 'em by chill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not just the source to the recent Kindle Fire, but code for all of them back to the original. Nice move.

    I wonder if they held any bits back?

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    1. Re:All of 'em by Hardhead_7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Considering that the Kindle Fire runs Android, are we supposed to forgive them for intrusive DRM because they abided by their legal requirements to us? Maybe we should also be happy that McDonald's food isn't full of arsenic or Mattel toys don't have lead paint. I mean, that's great and all, but they had to do it. It doesn't make up for the sorry state of the locked down Kindle.

      Incidentally, this is coming from an Amazon Prime customer. I buy almost everything off of Amazon these days, with one exception: books. For that I have my Nook, which I use mainly because it reads PDFs too.

    2. Re:All of 'em by chrb · · Score: 5, Informative

      It looks like this is just the GPL software. Nothing terribly exciting but maybe it has kernel drivers for the e-ink display. AFAIK the Kindle uses a locked bootloader so there is no way to actually get your ROM image running anyway. The Fire is a bit more promising, and the source release does seem to have kicked off a bit of interest in hacking it a bit, it's been rooted and Android market runs. I'll save you the 148MB download; here's the contents of Kindle_src_3.3_611680021.tar.gz:

      gplrelease/
      gplrelease/picocom-1.4.tar.gz
      gplrelease/util-linux-2.12r.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/atk-1.26.0.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/uboot-1.3.0-rc3.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/pango-1.24.5.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/gstreamer-0.10.17.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/taglib-1.5.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/e2fsprogs-1.38_patch.tar.gz
      gplrelease/fuse-2.7.1.tar.gz
      gplrelease/libltdl-1.2.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libol-0.3.18.tar.gz
      gplrelease/syslog-ng-1.6.11.tar.gz
      gplrelease/busybox-1.7.2.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/webkit-1.1.7.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/e2fsprogs-1.38.tar.gz
      gplrelease/wireless_tools.29.tar.gz
      gplrelease/mtd-utils-1.0.0.tar.gz
      gplrelease/pango-1.6.0.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/lrzsz-0.12.20.tar.gz
      gplrelease/gst-plugins-base-0.10.17.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libvolume-id_092.ipk
      gplrelease/ifupdown_0.6.8.tar.gz
      gplrelease/gst-plugins-good-0.10.6.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/gst-plugins-base-0.10.6.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/linux-2.6.26-lab126.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/gnutls-2.8.4.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/module-init-tools-3.2.2.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libgpg-error-1.4.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/DirectFB-1.2.0.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libproxy-0.2.3.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/module-init-tools-3.2.2_patch.tar.gz
      gplrelease/glib-2.22.2.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/udev-112.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/alsa-lib-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz
      gplrelease/enchant-1.4.2.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/gtk+-2.16.5.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libgcrypt-1.4.4.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/base-files_3.0.14.ipk
      gplrelease/alsa-lib-1.0.13.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/fuse-2.7.1_link.tar
      gplrelease/dosfstools-2.11.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/libsoup-2.30.0.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/procps-3.2.7.tar.gz
      gplrelease/procps-3.2.7_patch.tar.gz
      gplrelease/base-passwd_3.5.9.tar.gz
      gplrelease/powertop-1.10.tar.gz
      gplrelease/iptables-1.3.3.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/glibc-2.5.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/alsa-utils-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz
      gplrelease/alsa-utils-1.0.13.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/gdb-6.6.tar.bz2
      gplrelease/sysvinit-2.86.tar.gz
      gplrelease/cairo-1.8.6.tar.bz2

    3. Re:All of 'em by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Intrusive DRM?

      B&N is the one who locked the Nook Tablet's bootloader, tivoizing it. Not Amazon.

      I love how the article points out how easily hackable the Nook Touch was while ignoring the fact that B&N has made a major move towards lockdown with the Tablet - locked bootloader, plus it is partitioned so you can only use 1GB of the storage for sideloaded content. The rest is "B&N Content" only.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    4. Re:All of 'em by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      B&N is the one who locked the Nook Tablet's bootloader, tivoizing it. Not Amazon.

      I love how the article points out how easily hackable the Nook Touch was while ignoring the fact that B&N has made a major move towards lockdown with the Tablet - locked bootloader, plus it is partitioned so you can only use 1GB of the storage for sideloaded content. The rest is "B&N Content" only.

      It's apparently a requirement for Netflix.

      Sure every Android device can get Netflix, but what they stream is the SD version of the video. If you want the HD version, your device needs to be locked down.

      Compare Netflix on the old Color and the new Tablet and you'll see a difference in video quality. It's another reason why I wrote off the "Netflix on Fire is blurrier on Fire" comparison reviews - of course it is if Amazon didn't qualify for Netflix HD. (And yes, the Amazon version was noticiably blurrier as it was scaled up to the screen, whilst the Tablet was scaling down a higher-quality stream).

      And the Nook tablet having 1GB of user content - big whoop. Do what you do with every other Android device and stick an SD card in it.

      B&N feels more people would want higher-quality Netflix than the small crowd who wants to hack the device (they're a nice bunch, but not as big a group as those who just want to consume stuff).

  2. Re:Remote removing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Those already exist for most kindles, with the only requirement being a jailbreak. The kindle is built upon a linux system, with a java framework and a bunch of shell scripts. The shell scripts are the important bits which handle downloading the ads & and there was also a mod to revoke amazon's control entirely.

    Source: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150

  3. Nothing to see here. by Kufat · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's just a minimal GPL drop. No application level source. Unlike (for example) Netgear or Linksys, they don't even provide the object code and build tools to let you build your own usable device ROM image from a combination of proprietary and OSS components.