Hi, this is Harald from gpl-violations.org. Given my involvement with
projects like OpenEZX and OpenMoko, I was obviosuly very interested in
investigating this issue.
CIJOML wrote:
Hi there,
it looks like there is running linux somewhere inside in the radio part of the
firmware...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-326419.html
$ strings kaiser_radio_0x301.nb |grep -i linux
M6500C L4/Linux
L4 Linux
NICTNICTA::Pistachio - built on Jan 23 2007 18:10:22 by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
using gcc version 3.4.1
start_linux_cmd
vmlinux != NULL
vmlinux
vmlinux igms_name=ramdisk root=/dev/igms0
start_linux
Can anybody else confirm this and contact those companies for source codes?
I have confirmed that the abovementioned strings are present in the
radio firmware of the device.
However, after a detailed analysis (spent the better part of yesterday
looking at the various L4 sources and the firmware binary) it seems
evident that the strings are part of the linux loader, i.e. the part of
L4 that can execute a specially-modified linux kernel (called wombat).
The lua startup script of the radio firmware does not execute the
start_linux function but rather only the start_server function to start
a number of proprietary servers on top of the microkernel.
So at least up to this level of analysis, I cannot find any reason to
believe there is Linux in the radio firmware. However, this obviously
is also no hard proof.
If anyone still has reason to believe Linux is used in the radio
firmware of the Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset, please let me know. I'm happy
to investigate in case new evidence comes up.
As a side note, it would be the most stupid thing to do for a GSM
chipset vendor. In all existing smartphone chipsets you have two CPU
cores (an ARM9 for baseband and ARM11 for the UI/apps in the MSM7200) to
avoid any licensing and regulatory issues arising from running the GSM
stack in the more-or-less open OS on the application side (Windows
Mobile, Linux, ...)
Cheers,
- Harald Welte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://gnumonks.org/
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