I'm not going to post much more about this topic. The contents of this describe the lack of any notice of the actual licensing scheme of conexant/linuxant modems and their Linux drivers -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Chad Christopher Giffin Reply-To: typo@shaw.ca To: Alan Cox , Majordomo@vger.kernel.org , Paulo Marques , Marc Boucher Subject: Re: Linuxant/Conexant HSF/HCF Modem Drivers Unlocked Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:42:42 -0600 On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 14:50 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > On Gwe, 2004-10-29 at 13:43, Chad Christopher Giffin wrote: > > I still find myself deeply troubled and questioning the legalities of > > using "GPL\0[...]" in the license string of a non-GPL module. As it is > > a blatant lie. > > Oh its almost certainly a criminal offence in the USA - the DMCA for > example. The \0 stupidity checker needs to go into the kernel. Well, as I expected, after learning my mistake, I am being told I was in the legal wrong. Examine this: I have a gentoo system. I bought a used pci modem card. Someone told me to use the hcfpcimodem package for the drivers, cause it's of course a piece of sh*t winmodem. I ran: emerge hcfpcimodem I get something installed in non-standard places. I can't find any documentation. It doesn't tell me ANYTHING upon install EXCEPT something similar to: "run hcfpciconfig to install your modem" I'm left thinking this is just another free package. When I run hcfpciconfig, I'm told to enter my kernel module build directory name, my email address, and a license number or "FREE". It tells me that I need a license from linuxant to do fax, voice or anything higher then 14.4k. I do a search on the web for "linuxant license" and get keygen.pl. I run keygen.pl and enter the key it gives me. Upon questioning why I need a key, I strings the modules and see: "license=GPL". I continue on my merry way thinking everything is OK. Now where have I gone wrong here? And plus... when I go into the standard directories for documentation: "/usr/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/share/doc" I find nothing about hcfpcimodem or hcfpciconfig(1). And I certainly find no license file in any of those directories OR the '/lib/modules//misc' directory it places these magically appearing binaries. /usr/sbin/hcfpciconfig says: # Copyright (c) 2003 Linuxant inc. but there is no mention of where the license is or what kind of license there is. and its a sh script that, normally, is too arcane for one to decipher. Following all of this, does anyone have a clue what the licensing scheme is of linuxant drivers? there is no mention of anything except the string "license=GPL" in the binaries. It upsets me that I have to pay TWICE for this modem. Once for the hardware and again for the driver. sheeesh! -- - Chad Christopher Giffin mailto:typo@shaw.ca There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who do not. -- anonymous