Re: Inprocomm and their module

On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 12:58:44AM +0100, Carlos Martin wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>  I've been trying to get some information about my Inprocomm IPN2220
> wireless card and I've stumbled upon D-Link's GPL source tarball for
> it's DI-624M device. It is available from D-Link's and from

Are you referring to the DI-634M ?  I cannot find a DI-624M.

>  The files in linux-2.4.x/drivers/net/wireless/inpro2220 in the
> tarball are a Makefile, some header files and a binary MIPS file. The
> output from file is:
> IPN2220: ELF 32-bit MSB MIPS-I relocatable, MIPS, version 1 (SYSV), not 
> stripped
> and upon disassembly I can see that it's actually a Linux module-ish
> file. It does contain some Linux functions as .extern references,
> although it itself doesn't seem to have module entry/exit functions
> (from what I've seen up to now).
> 
>  The headers are under a propietary lincense, and _use_ of these files
> is prohibited except if you have a license agreement with
> inprocomm. 

> This has become quite hard recently, as the company doesn't
> seem to exist anymore. The website went down early 2005 and its domain
> (inprocomm.com.tw) stopped resolving some time later.

IIRC, they've been bought by another .tw company, though I don't
remember their name. 

>  The Makefile references some .o files which should get linked with
> the binary blob in order to make the driver, though neither those
> files ore their corresponding sources are available.

ok, at least those .o files need to be available.

>  Should their driver be available under the GPL, it being a
> derivative work (I think) of the Linux kernel? What can be done now
> that the company (apparently) ceased to exist?

I am currently downloading the D-Link DI-634M 'GPL' tarball, and I'll 
investigate it before I can make any further statement.

>  How far am I allowed to reverse-engineer this binary blob under
> current EU regulations? I'd like to create an Open Source driver for
> it, but I can't be sure I'm allowed to even look at those header files
> and/or the binary blob for me to base it on.

That's quite a disputed question.  First of all, the technique of
reverse engineering matters.  If you run the code in an emulator, and
look at the emulator, then it's merely observation of a running program
and certainly not "decompilation" in the sense of the EU copyright
regulations.

Whether disassembling the code falls under the "decompilation" rules is
also unclear within the legal community.

In any way, there is the exception for interoperability.  There you
first need to ask the vendor for sufficient documentation - and when
they don't give it to you in some specified period of time, you're
allowed to do re-engineering for interoperability purpose.

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge@xxxxxxxxxxxx>                   http://gnumonks.org/
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