Has anyone heard about EPIA MII FastBoot ROM Utility? < GPL Issue

Stefan de Konink skinkie at xs4all.nl
Thu Jun 17 09:05:00 CEST 2004


Today I discussed it with a collegue of me. He said it is the way you
bring this to VIA, if there is any force, like they do when you infridge
their patents, it just disappears from their website.
At the moment they claim to give a OEM (or a end user) source code (one C
file with compile instructions for VC++ 1.5 (!)).
Probably someone should gently point out that what they give is object
code. And with the question if the want to participate in the LinuxBIOS
code, source for the VGA initialisation for example :)

Two months ago I had basically the same problem with Acer (BenQ) about
their AccessPoints basically they did the same thing as Linksys. With the
new products they got Wind River...
The FSF coundn't do anything because there was no link to find except for
the Linux Kernel.

So I presume the EPIA-toyers like the FastBios product the same als the
LinuxBIOS project. Though the LinuxBIOS claims to be unstable for the
board (sounds scary) while 'their' VIA building provides a 'working'
package based on LinuxBIOS.

Is anybody of the developers group able to take some action?


Stefan

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Matt Jarvis wrote:

> This wouldn't surprise me. Via did the same with the Waste sources,
> built their own version for the PadlockSL utility without mention of the
> fact it was GPL Waste source based. They withdrew the code from their
> webpage when it was put to them that it was a GPL infringement. They
> dont seem to understand the concept of the GPL very well.
>
>
> Adam Sulmicki wrote:
> >>I'm trying to boot from the CF reader on the VIA Epia platform. After
> >>reading forums and mailinglist this could be possible by the FastBoot
> >>Utility.
> >>
> >>http://downloads.viaarena.com/WinCE/Apr04/fastboot%20v2.01.zip
> >>
> >>But I was a bit surpriced what I found in there...
> >>grep linux `find` and look at the 'loader*.obj'-files.
> >>
> >>
> >>Can somebody confirm this is _not_ distributed GPL code as a binary?
> >
> >
> > fyi, you can get to this page from :
> >
> > 	http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=343
> >
> > you can do:
> > 	wget http://downloads.viaarena.com/WinCE/Apr04/fastboot%20v2.01.zip
> > 	unzip fastboot%20v2.01.zip
> >   	strings */*/loader?.obj | grep -i linux
> >
> > it gives you stuff like :
> >
> > _linuxbios_versionR
> > _linuxbios_extra_versionX
> > _linuxbios_build`
> > _linuxbios_compile_timef
> > _linuxbios_compile_byp
> > _linuxbios_compile_hostv
> > _linuxbios_compile_domainz
> > _linuxbios_compiler~
> > _linuxbios_linker
> > _linuxbios_assembler
> >
> >
> > etc, etc.
> >
> > also that http page mentioned above has contact info. perhaps something to
> > inquire at.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > Linuxbios at clustermatic.org
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
>
> --
> Matt Jarvis
> Technical Development Manager
> Rolec Music Ltd
> 210 Belgravia Works, Marlborough Road, London, UK N19 4NF
> Tel: +44 207 281 4776 Fax : +44 207 281 4565
> mailto: matt at rolec.ltd.uk
> web: www.rolecmusic.com
>
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