I see... Thank you very much for these clarifications. Michael
On Wednesday 08 October 2008 13:52:58 Alastair Johnson wrote: > Michael Zanetti wrote: > > On Sunday 31 August 2008 15:50:05 Al Johnson wrote: > >> The patch turns on the echo and noise suppression capabilities in the > >> GSM chipset using one of the hidden and NDA's AT commands someone kindly > >> posted on the hardware list. > > > > Just for my understanding: I thought that on my openmoko-phone even the > > hardware is supposed to be free and open. How can it be than, that there > > are "hidden commands" and NDA's? > > > > I read somewhere (long time ago - before the FR reached its birthday) > > that there might be some pieces of hardware not open such as the GSM > > chip. I guess exactly this is the case. Could someone experienced to > > NDA's, copyright laws, GPL violations and so on please explain me how > > exactly this is handled here? > > I'm sure someone from openmoko will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll > have a go. The aim is to be as open as practicable, and they are more > open than anything else I know of. > > Companies hold copyright on their documentation, and can grant or deny > the right to copy that documentation. Ideally this would be both public > and redistributable, but this is often not the case. They may make it > public but not redistributable, or keep it entirely private, disclosing > it only under some variety of nondisclosure agreement. > > NDA is a very general description, and any NDA will detail what can and > can't be disclosed under what conditions. It is quite possible for an > NDA to allow documentation to be used in writing GPL code. I gather from > discussions on the list that the NDA for the Glamo would allow Openmoko > to rewrite the documentation and release the rewrite, but not the > original documentation. This may seem bizarre, but it allows SMedia to > keep control of their documents, and to disclaim liability for errors in > anything disclosed. > > GSM firmware will never be fully open unless national telecoms > regulators decide to relax their rules. The GSM modem is in effect a > separate device with its own firmware that we talk to through a serial > interface. It just happens to be on the same board. The commands that > the modem has to deal with are set out in a number of GSM standards. On > top of this there are commands specific to this chipset/firmware, some > of which Openmoko have documentation for under an NDA. This appears to > let them use the commands in GPL code and to answer specific questions, > but not to release a description of the whole command set. It seems > there are further commands, such as those controlling AEC, that are not > mentioned in the documents Openmoko have. > > Openmoko are walking a tightrope here. Open is a new word to chipset > manufacturers in the telecoms arena, and some understand more than > others. Until they can be educated there will be compromises to be made, > and decisions may not always work out as well as they initially > appeared. Certain features that people expect may not be possible in an > open phone right now. This applied to wifi for GTA01 as there was no > sufficiently low power wifi chip with an open driver. The problems with > the binary blob for the GTA01 gps have made those clearly unacceptable, > but 3D acceleration without a binary blob is currently unobtainable in a > mobile with 480x640 resolution. In the meantime they're heading in the > right direction and researching the most open options available - see > http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/MokoForesight for examples. With luck they > will manage to convince manufacturers of the advantages of openness > along the way. > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community