Subject: Re: Open Source Wifistix driver
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.distributions.gumstix.general
Date: 2006-11-07 22:30:12 GMT (2 years, 34 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours and 53 minutes ago)
On Nov 7, 2006, at 5:58 AM, Alexandre Pereira Nunes wrote: > AFAIK it does not support it. And by the way, the open-source > driver is > currently not that open. Gumstix released the code under open > source and > then was required to do a recall on it (a software recall sounds > funny) > and take it away because the company who makes the wireless module is > having a hard time understanding the legalities of it. The driver does not do master mode; this is the same driver that's always been there for the wifistix, and while the driver is supposedly licensed under GPL, Marvell has asked us to not publish the code while they try and get their heads around exactly what GPL means. The code which we had previously published came from Marvell under GPL, and then I made a couple patches against it to get it working right on modern kernels, and to deal correctly with some gumstix-specific implementation bits. Those patches are still in the buildroot, but the Marvell tarball is not, while discussions continue with them. > I'm not sure if the driver was released under the GPL, if it has, > Gumstix, inc. is being forced to violate the license of it's own > released source code by taking it back, a situation for which I don't > think I ever saw any precedents. The driver is under the GPL, and appears to include a number of bits of other people's GPL code, so it doesn't look like Marvell is going to not be able to release this under GPL. I believe that Gumstix is currently in violation of the terms of the GPL, as Alexandre points out, since we're distributing a binary of the driver without its source code, and I've made it very clear to Marvell's attorneys that I believe that's the case -- that we are infringing on copyright at their request, and that we need to fix that as soon as possible before the copyright holders in the linux kernel (and any other GPL contributors from whose code this driver is derived) get upset and start to insist... Marvell, like all large companies, is taking their sweet time in considering all this... I believe in the end they will do the right thing though. > Luckily there'll be a solution soon, and then people will be free to > study it to see if it can be made to work as an AP or not. Yes, I hope so. The way the Marvell driver works, it's a multi- layered thing, where part of the implementation is actually in firmware on the module, and not in the driver; the source code for that firmware is *not* GPL, and Marvell does not make the code available. However, it appears that the OLPC hundred-dollar-laptop project is using the same Marvell chipset as us, and they are developing their own fully-open firmware from reports that I've seen. C ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642