HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[CIJOML]

Hi there,

it looks like there is running linux somewhere inside in the radio part of the 
firmware...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-326419.html

$ strings kaiser_radio_0x301.nb |grep -i linux
 M6500C L4/Linux
 L4 Linux
 NICTNICTA::Pistachio - built on Jan 23 2007 18:10:22 by dpandian@l4linux15 
using gcc version 3.4.1
 start_linux_cmd
 vmlinux != NULL
 vmlinux
 vmlinux igms_name=ramdisk root=/dev/igms0
 start_linux

Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source codes?

Thanks a lot!

Michal

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[Mauricio Mauad Menegaz Filho]

2007/12/7, CIJOML <cijoml@volny.cz>:
> Hi there,
> ...
> Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source codes?
>

It seems that the sources are there:

http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/


Mauad

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[CIJOML]

Dne so 8. prosince 2007 Mauricio Mauad Menegaz Filho napsal(a):
> 2007/12/7, CIJOML <cijoml@volny.cz>:
> > Hi there,
> > ...
> > Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source
> > codes?
>
> It seems that the sources are there:
>
> http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/
>
>
> Mauad

Hi Mauad,

I haven't checked that, but this is only paravirtualized solution. I am 
interrested about drivers for MSM chipset which this linux controls and these 
sources probably doesn't include it.

Michal

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[Pavel Machek]

On Fri 2007-12-07 22:40:50, Mauricio Mauad Menegaz Filho wrote:
> 2007/12/7, CIJOML <cijoml@volny.cz>:
> > Hi there,
> > ...
> > Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source codes?
> >
> 
> It seems that the sources are there:
> 
> http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/

Did phone packaging contain sources or written offer for them? If not,
they are probably still violating GPL. gpl-violations.org, I'd say.

-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[Mauricio Mauad Menegaz Filho]

> Did phone packaging contain sources or written offer for them? If not,
> they are probably still violating GPL. gpl-violations.org, I'd say.

Hi Michal/Pavel

Both of you are right. Qualcomm is not offering source codes for the drivers (at
 least, there is no way to find the drivers on their site, and they
are probably not
asking for MSM based devices to advertise *drivers available* or such), nor the
iguana source code contains the drivers. Licenses are needless until violated.

Mauad

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[Scott Preece]

On Dec 11, 2007 11:02 AM, Mauricio Mauad Menegaz Filho <mmauad@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Did phone packaging contain sources or written offer for them? If not,
> > they are probably still violating GPL. gpl-violations.org, I'd say.
>
> Hi Michal/Pavel
>
> Both of you are right. Qualcomm is not offering source codes for the drivers (at
>  least, there is no way to find the drivers on their site, and they
> are probably not
> asking for MSM based devices to advertise *drivers available* or such), nor the
> iguana source code contains the drivers. Licenses are needless until violated.
>
> Mauad

If the drivers are on the L4 side, they would have no obligation to
provide them. That's one of the reasons device manufacturers look at
virtualized/micro-kernel architectures.

Of course, if the device has Linux in it, they would still need to
provide the sources for that, either in the product or via a written
offer.

scott


-- 
scott preece

Re: HTC TyTN || (P4550) violates GPL?? Or maybe Qualcomm itself with MSM7200???

[Harald Welte]

Hi, this is Harald from gpl-violations.org. Given my involvement with 
projects like OpenEZX and OpenMoko, I was obviosuly very interested in 
investigating this issue.

CIJOML wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> it looks like there is running linux somewhere inside in the radio part of the 
> firmware...
> 
> http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-326419.html
> 
> $ strings kaiser_radio_0x301.nb |grep -i linux
>  M6500C L4/Linux
>  L4 Linux
>  NICTNICTA::Pistachio - built on Jan 23 2007 18:10:22 by dpandian@l4linux15 
> using gcc version 3.4.1
>  start_linux_cmd
>  vmlinux != NULL
>  vmlinux
>  vmlinux igms_name=ramdisk root=/dev/igms0
>  start_linux
> 
> Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source codes?

I have confirmed that the abovementioned strings are present in the 
radio firmware of the device.

However, after a detailed analysis (spent the better part of yesterday 
looking at the various L4 sources and the firmware binary) it seems 
evident that the strings are part of the linux loader, i.e. the part of 
L4 that can execute a specially-modified linux kernel (called wombat).

The lua startup script of the radio firmware does not execute the 
start_linux function but rather only the start_server function to start 
a number of proprietary servers on top of the microkernel.

So at least up to this level of analysis, I cannot find any reason to 
believe there is Linux in the radio firmware.  However, this obviously 
is also no hard proof.

If anyone still has reason to believe Linux is used in the radio 
firmware of the Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset, please let me know.  I'm happy 
to investigate in case new evidence comes up.

As a side note, it would be the most stupid thing to do for a GSM 
chipset vendor.  In all existing smartphone chipsets you have two CPU 
cores (an ARM9 for baseband and ARM11 for the UI/apps in the MSM7200) to 
  avoid any licensing and regulatory issues arising from running the GSM 
stack in the more-or-less open OS on the application side (Windows 
Mobile, Linux, ...)

Cheers,

- Harald Welte <laforge@gnumonks.org>                   http://gnumonks.org/
============================================================================
We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds. -- Linus