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Re: [ECOS] Possible GPL violation


On 01/18/2010 12:24 PM, Jonas Gorski wrote:
Hello,

I have obtained a system running redboot, without any sources for
redboot. Since I am not sure whether I am entitled to the source code,
I will not disclose the vendor for now.

The redboot itself claims to be version 0.9; also, it claims to be a
certified release. This could mean that this was a pre-gpl redboot,
but the system is quite recent, and the redboot was built in 2009.
Also, the redhat copyright header goes until 2004.

Also, strings yields these lines:

Can't read ELF header
Only absolute ELF images supported
Short data reading ELF file
*** Abort! Attempt to load ELF data to address: %p which is not in RAM
Can't load ELF file - program headers out of order
Can't read ELF program header
Image is not ELF, skipping ELF parsing...
Only absolute ELF images supported
*** Abort! Attempt to load ELF data to address: %p which is not in RAM
Short data reading ELF file

which seems to indicate that this at least contains code from redboot
2.0 or later.

My question now is: could this still be licensed under an other
license, as the 2.0 sources of redboot state that "alternative
licenses for eCos may be arranged by contacting RedHat, Inc.", or does
this have to be GPL, and therefore should I have access to the source
code?

Best Regards,
Jonas Gorski

P.S: I did try to contact the vendor by email, but they did not
respond. Also they stated publically that they would not release the
source code of their boot loaders.


This discussion should be on the eCos maintainer's list - CC'd


Jonas - for us to have any idea about this, we'd need to know
the vendor, model, etc.  RedBoot has never had a version such
as "0.9" except from OEMs (e.g. Intel uses numbers like that)

Once we have some basic data, we can help you look into this.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
------------------------------------------------------------


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