[ECOS] GPL violation ?

[ECOS] GPL violation ?

[Andrea Merello]

Hi!

It happened I found a device that I suspect uses eCos OS in firmware,
but I can't get source from the vendor site. So I suspect they are
violating GPL and would like to investigate. I have not contacted the
vendor yet directly, I'd like to know if they are really usign eCos
and if they eventually had been authorized by eCos developer before go
on..

The device is a PCI wireless card from Marvell

Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas]
802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03).

It has and ARM processor where the firmare runs..
I'm developing a driver for it, on Linux OS, to properly initialize
the device, the driver has to upload the firmware in the device RAM.
The  firmware I used is from the BSD package.
You can find it here
 http://www.nazgul.ch/malo/malo-firmware-1.0.tgz

Iit looks like it is the same firmware that is contained in the
windows driver officially distributed with the card.

The windows firmware can be obtained using the utility here
http://www.saillard.org/linux/mrv8k/files/mrv8k_extract_fw.c

I suspect this firmware is based on eCos because

daiquiri:/home/user # strings /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware
/mrv8k- f.fw |grep -i ecos
eCos :
ARM eCos
daiquiri:/home/user #

Thank you

Andrea

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Re: [ECOS] GPL violation ?

[Mike Arthur]

On 8/30/07, Andrea Merello <andrea.merello@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> It happened I found a device that I suspect uses eCos OS in firmware,
> but I can't get source from the vendor site. So I suspect they are
> violating GPL and would like to investigate. I have not contacted the
> vendor yet directly, I'd like to know if they are really usign eCos
> and if they eventually had been authorized by eCos developer before go
> on..
>

eCos uses GPL with an exception.  For more information check out:
http://ecos.sourceware.org/ecos/license-overview.html

There is a good Q&A section midway down the page.

Are you trying to get their sources for the eCos HAL or their firmware
application code?

Mike

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Re: [ECOS] GPL violation ?

[Andrew Lunn]

> It has and ARM processor where the firmare runs..
> I'm developing a driver for it, on Linux OS, to properly initialize
> the device, the driver has to upload the firmware in the device RAM.
> The  firmware I used is from the BSD package.
> You can find it here
>  http://www.nazgul.ch/malo/malo-firmware-1.0.tgz

I disassembled the startup code and compared it to the
arm/arch/current/src/vectors.S.  It looks like it is a RAM startup
eCos image.

As another poster pointed out, the exception to the GPL means that you
can only ask for the eCos sources and any code derived from the eCos
sources, eg there HAL packages, probably there serial port driver,
flash driver, etc. 

It is unlikely they have used eCos code when writing there
"application" code, ie what actually drives the WLAN MAC. So it is
unlikely you can get that code. 

So if you want to run "hello world" on there WLAN hardware, you
shouldn't have a problem. 

If you want to write your own firmware to drive the WLAN hardware they
can at least get a basic working eCos as a foundation for you to write
your own firmware for the WLAN hardware.

  Andrew

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