I'm not going to post much more about this topic.
The contents of this describe the lack of any notice of the actual
licensing scheme of conexant/linuxant modems and their Linux drivers
-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Chad Christopher Giffin <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: Alan Cox <[email protected]>, [email protected]
<[email protected]>, Paulo Marques <[email protected]>, Marc
Boucher <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Linuxant/Conexant HSF/HCF Modem Drivers Unlocked
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:42:42 -0600
On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 14:50 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Gwe, 2004-10-29 at 13:43, Chad Christopher Giffin wrote:
> > I still find myself deeply troubled and questioning the legalities of
> > using "GPL\0[...]" in the license string of a non-GPL module. As it is
> > a blatant lie.
>
> Oh its almost certainly a criminal offence in the USA - the DMCA for
> example. The \0 stupidity checker needs to go into the kernel.
Well, as I expected, after learning my mistake, I am being told I was in
the legal wrong.
Examine this:
I have a gentoo system. I bought a used pci modem card. Someone told
me to use the hcfpcimodem package for the drivers, cause it's of course
a piece of sh*t winmodem. I ran:
emerge hcfpcimodem
I get something installed in non-standard places. I can't find any
documentation. It doesn't tell me ANYTHING upon install EXCEPT
something similar to: "run hcfpciconfig to install your modem"
I'm left thinking this is just another free package.
When I run hcfpciconfig, I'm told to enter my kernel module build
directory name, my email address, and a license number or "FREE". It
tells me that I need a license from linuxant to do fax, voice or
anything higher then 14.4k.
I do a search on the web for "linuxant license" and get keygen.pl.
I run keygen.pl and enter the key it gives me.
Upon questioning why I need a key, I strings the modules and see:
"license=GPL". I continue on my merry way thinking everything is OK.
Now where have I gone wrong here? And plus... when I go into the
standard directories for documentation:
"/usr/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/share/doc"
I find nothing about hcfpcimodem or hcfpciconfig(1). And I certainly
find no license file in any of those directories OR the
'/lib/modules/<kernel version>/misc' directory it places these magically
appearing binaries.
/usr/sbin/hcfpciconfig says:
# Copyright (c) 2003 Linuxant inc.
but there is no mention of where the license is or what kind of license
there is. and its a sh script that, normally, is too arcane for one to
decipher.
Following all of this, does anyone have a clue what the licensing scheme
is of linuxant drivers? there is no mention of anything except the
string "license=GPL" in the binaries.
It upsets me that I have to pay TWICE for this modem. Once for the
hardware and again for the driver. sheeesh!
--
-
Chad Christopher Giffin
mailto:[email protected]
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary
and those who do not. -- anonymous