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On 01/06/10 10:13, Neil Williams wrote:
On Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:22:19 +0100 Simon Waters<simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Neil Williams wrote:GPLv3 won't give you a means to get modifications onto the device either.It is specifically required in GPLv3 that the procedure to do this is supplied for such a device where the original supplier can modify the software on the device. So in this case a procedure would have to be supplied that isn't "a hack".Not true if the original procedure itself is a series of hacks - all publicly documented. There's no requirement for an easy-to-use method that would work without specialist knowledge and possibly specialist tools, as long as those tools are available from third-parties or suitable for DIY construction.
What I referred to as a "hack" is when people have had to reverse engineer things to work out how to flash it. Worse, when some messing with keys is required. Worse still, when the device manufacturer is actively trying to stop you (as is the case with the Android hacks).
Not necessarily. All it really does is put the sources out there together with a few Wiki pages - you still need to know how to build the entire image and how to get that image onto the device. Yes, that would be documented somewhere but it does not need to be something that any end-user would understand.
Yes, it's good that those who can get a modified image onto the device are not actively prevented from running such an image due to constraints like "signed code" or similar but that provision does not make it any easier to get your modifications onto the device itself. It just ensures that once on, the modified code is not prevented from executing. It certainly does not mandate that some friendly installation method is constructed where none exists beforehand.
No of course not. Whatever the original developers of the device used is sufficient. And in many cases this is a simple firmware flash over USB, but is undocumented, locked down, and if hacked will be disabled be the next official update. More importantly, only the most popular devices even get a hack in the first place.
Fancy installers are irrelevant here. Most end users wouldn't know how to get a desktop running without a fancy installer (many can't even do it with an installer!). But I can. I could even start from scratch with assembler if it came to that. Yet most mobile devices are out of my reach, due to hardcore reverse engineering and possibly cryptography being needed.
Of course, Linux being GPLv3 doesn't help other devices, such as those with Symbian. That said, it might help to change the general mindset somewhat, and it doesn't seem unlikely that they might want to use GPL code at some point.
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