Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263974AbUCZIz1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Mar 2004 03:55:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263979AbUCZIz1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Mar 2004 03:55:27 -0500 Received: from 1-2-2-1a.has.sth.bostream.se ([82.182.130.86]:5798 "EHLO K-7.stesmi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263974AbUCZIzU (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Mar 2004 03:55:20 -0500 Message-ID: <4063EFA5.5070001@stesmi.com> Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:53:57 +0100 From: Stefan Smietanowski User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: GOTO Masanori CC: Matthew Wilcox , Jeff Garzik , Adrian Bunk , 239952@bugs.debian.org, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Binary-only firmware covered by the GPL? References: <20040325082949.GA3376@gondor.apana.org.au> <20040325220803.GZ16746@fs.tum.de> <40635DD9.8090809@pobox.com> <20040326003339.GD25059@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <81ptb0wh45.wl@omega.webmasters.gr.jp> In-Reply-To: <81ptb0wh45.wl@omega.webmasters.gr.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 926 Lines: 20 Hi GOTO. > But think about: why can we distribute assembler only code in linux > kernel? It's near to binary form (objdump -d is your friend). It's not. The difference is that we can always insert another asm statement anywhere (of course changing the way the function works) and still have it assemble and unless we goofed up it'll still run. mov ax,ax for instance won't do a thing. We can insert that anywhere we wish without changing anything. The assembler will take care of any relative jumps and pointers but with a binary firmware, try to insert a byte into it (not CHANGE one, INSERT one), even if you know just insert a NOP somewhere - and see what happens. // Stefan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/