Hi, accidently, I've sent this e-mail to the legal list owner and already received a case number somehow. I've no idea wether it was generated automatically and wether I should include it here or not. I just want to make a bit more public what I found out.
I've already seen the various e-mails here on the list about the LG TV firmware case. Recently, I bought a Grundig TV (46VLE8160BL) and it was fairly easy to gain telnet access. By further inspecting the system I found out that the firmware builds on top of a couple of GPL / LGPL software, namely a 2.6.28.10 linux kernel, busybox, directfb, etc. It all looks like a similar setup to what LG and Samsung are using in their products based on the MSTAR Saturn 6/7 chipsets, so I suspect it's based on a generic SDK coming directly from MSTAR, the provider of those chipsets. Also likely is that Grundig's TV chassis is manufactured at TP Vision (Philips Smart TVs), as the main circuit board is named "TP Board". There are also striking spec similarities between the Grundig 46VLE8160 and the Philips 46PFL5507K built and sold at around the same time. The latest firmware for the Philips seems to use a 2.6.28.9 kernel, but it's encrypted, so I can't be sure. It's worth noting that Philips has an open-source software disclaimer (although not mentioning the GPL) in their user manual and they promise to send you used open-source code upon request up to 3 years after purchase. Grundig also has a page with license disclaimers in their user manual, but there's no word at all about open-source, GPL or LGPL. As I've not found any source code published by Grundig, I've sent 2 requests to them ([email protected]) asking for the release of the GPL source code being used in their firmware such that I can reproduce their firmware, but so far they didn't reply. So, what can I / we do here? Best, Stephan
