Hubert Feyrer wrote:

> In article <20041221173314.GA19926@panix.com> you wrote:
> 
>>A more interesting question is whether shipment of the Broadcom driver in
>>binary firmware distributions for the device violates the GPL.  Until
>>Cisco forced Linksys to comply with the GPL at all, the firmware was
>>supplied *only* as a single binary image.
> 
> 
> Smells like a violation, yes.
> 

Maybe not. I don't know the specifics of this, but if they are loading a 
binary image into the Broadcom chip (firmware) then they might not have to 
publish the source to the firmware (unless it is based on a GPL'ed base). 
If there is a binary module linked to the kernel, then the issue is grey 
area because it is possible to create drivers from scratch without using 
one line of GPL'ed source. Simply making a kernel module that is in a 
different file is sufficient enough to prevent the forced release of your code.

The binary firmware releases are probably an image of an EEPROM or Flash 
part. The part is essentally like a filesystem and has distinct portions. A 
Linux kernel and a driver module, might reside on the same part, but they 
are not directly linked together. More than likely, they have a kernel with 
a ramdisk which contains the Broadcom module and all the other files which 
makes the thing work. The files in the ramdisk are not covered by the GPL, 
but are covered by their source license. If you create the program from 
scratch, then you do not need to follow the GPL because the ramdisk 
contents are not covered by the GPL.

Now if you changed the way the kernel loads the ramdisk (to obfuscate or 
encrypt it, for example), then you would need to post those changes, but 
not the contents of the ramdisk itself.

This is not legal advice and should be taken with a pound of salt.




-- 

Brian