Hi, 2010/2/4 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <[email protected]>: >> Let me explain our experience. A bunch of Debian Developers met at >> Taipei (.tw) and we got a netbook (MIPS based) under $100. After we >> got it, we had *no shell*, *no root*, *no loader access*, *no >> serial*,... >> >> We had to exploit a vulnerability in the pdf reader order to start >> telnetd and we were lucky to get a remote shell. After making some >> pressure to the company to release source code because they were >> violating GPL, they putted up some source packages, but not kernel >> (linux), nor bootloader (uboot). > > ouch! > > *sigh* yes, a chinese MIPS cpu, whilst wonderfully cheap, > reverse-engineering - i've done it: i have 9 HTC Linux phones and one > ETEN G500+ to prove it - is a complete pain. i'm not doing it again > :) > > so, this time we play a different game: use the fact that of the 20 > people wanting machines _fifteen_ of them are software engineers who > will happily help this factory to improve its value for the world > market by getting debian packages on it, right?
That was our main argument, but they did not listen to us. After lots of mails and advising gpl-violations.org we got a package source release which we did not want as we already had our debian packages for the rootfs. Kernel and loader still missing bits. -- Héctor Orón "Our Sun unleashes tremendous flares expelling hot gas into the Solar System, which one day will disconnect us." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
