[OpenWrt-Devel] Broadcom Wireless AC Driver

[openwrtwl at ruggedinbox.com]

On 2015-10-26 04:50, John Crispin wrote:
> On 26/10/2015 10:40, Felix Kaechele wrote:
>> On 25/10/15 23:27, openwrtwl at ruggedinbox.com wrote:
>>> I came across the source code for the broadcom
>>> wireless AC driver in a GPL release(I won't say from where so that 
>>> they
>>> don't get in trouble). I've attached the driver to this email.
>> 
>> This is not helpful.
>> 
>> If at all this will make developing an open source driver even harder
>> and more time consuming since this creates a similar situation to what
>> ReactOS developers got into after the Windows source code leak 
>> happened:
>> They had to have their code audited that no code from the illegally
>> leaked proprietary Windows code made it into the open source React OS
>> code (google for Clean room design if you want to know more about 
>> that).
>> 
>> Furthermore you created a situation in which the OpenWrt community as
>> well as other providers donating capacity to the community for 
>> carrying
>> the mailing list involuntarily distribute or mirror this proprietary 
>> code.
>> 
>> This is where your good intentions likely will yield bad results.
> 
> intentionally breaking the license/law is not "good intentions" the 
> fact
> that he used a anonymous remailer just shows that he knew what he was
> doing is wrong.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Regards,
>>   Felix
>> _______________________________________________
>> openwrt-devel mailing list
>> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> openwrt-devel mailing list
> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel

As far as I'm concerned I simply downloaded a publicly available GPL 
tarball that contained this code, if it was not supposed to have been 
publicly distributed that is an issue between the vendor and broadcom.

While this may be a legal gray area(which is why I used an anonymous 
mailer) I don't consider making people aware of code like this to be 
morally "wrong". I consider the withholding of critical firmware source 
code such as this to be "conversion" where the manufacturer is denying 
me control of my property(which is often an attempt to force me to 
purchase new equipment by not providing updates).
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel