From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 22281 invoked by alias); 18 Jan 2010 19:38:38 -0000 Received: (qmail 22273 invoked by uid 22791); 18 Jan 2010 19:38:37 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_05 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from hermes.mlbassoc.com (HELO mail.chez-thomas.org) (76.76.67.137) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:38:33 +0000 Received: by mail.chez-thomas.org (Postfix, from userid 999) id 9057C166051F; Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:38:31 -0700 (MST) Received: from hermes.chez-thomas.org (hermes_local [192.168.1.101]) by mail.chez-thomas.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A3D61660466; Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:38:31 -0700 (MST) Message-ID: <4B54B8B7.3030001@mlbassoc.com> Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:38:00 -0000 From: Gary Thomas User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20091228 Shredder/3.1a1pre MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jonas Gorski CC: eCos Maintainers Subject: Re: [ECOS] Possible GPL violation References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact ecos-maintainers-help@ecos.sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: ecos-maintainers-owner@ecos.sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2010-01/txt/msg00000.txt.bz2 On 01/18/2010 12:24 PM, Jonas Gorski wrote: > Hello, > > I have obtained a system running redboot, without any sources for > redboot. Since I am not sure whether I am entitled to the source code, > I will not disclose the vendor for now. > > The redboot itself claims to be version 0.9; also, it claims to be a > certified release. This could mean that this was a pre-gpl redboot, > but the system is quite recent, and the redboot was built in 2009. > Also, the redhat copyright header goes until 2004. > > Also, strings yields these lines: > > Can't read ELF header > Only absolute ELF images supported > Short data reading ELF file > *** Abort! Attempt to load ELF data to address: %p which is not in RAM > Can't load ELF file - program headers out of order > Can't read ELF program header > Image is not ELF, skipping ELF parsing... > Only absolute ELF images supported > *** Abort! Attempt to load ELF data to address: %p which is not in RAM > Short data reading ELF file > > which seems to indicate that this at least contains code from redboot > 2.0 or later. > > My question now is: could this still be licensed under an other > license, as the 2.0 sources of redboot state that "alternative > licenses for eCos may be arranged by contacting RedHat, Inc.", or does > this have to be GPL, and therefore should I have access to the source > code? > > Best Regards, > Jonas Gorski > > P.S: I did try to contact the vendor by email, but they did not > respond. Also they stated publically that they would not release the > source code of their boot loaders. > This discussion should be on the eCos maintainer's list - CC'd Jonas - for us to have any idea about this, we'd need to know the vendor, model, etc. RedBoot has never had a version such as "0.9" except from OEMs (e.g. Intel uses numbers like that) Once we have some basic data, we can help you look into this. -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Gary Thomas | Consulting for the MLB Associates | Embedded world ------------------------------------------------------------