Re: Inprocomm and their module

On Thursday 12 January 2006 13:42, Harald Welte wrote:
> 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.

I can, both in ftp://ftp.gpl-devices/verndor/D-Link/ and in D-Link.com's ftp 
site.

>
> >  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.

So there's still something that can be done. Good.

>
> >  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.

Hopefully these will give more information about the driver being a derivative 
work.

>
> >  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.

I'd ask, but I'm not sure where I should direct my queries. My laptop vendor 
answered with a link to linux-laptops.com, and when I sent back a reply 
saying that I wanted information about the hardware or any information about 
who has the docs, they never answered. I didn't expect them to have the docs, 
but at least that they gave me a pointer about who own the IP now.

   cmn
-- 
Carlos Martín       http://www.cmartin.tk