Thank you for clarifying. You more or less got it right. My mistake, perhaps, was calling it "proprietary" without explaining how. And frankly I do not completely understand where they may have violated the GPL (if at all). The Linux portion is not proprietary as far as I can tell, but in combination with instructions that are buried on a proprietary (this time the word is correctly used) chip, the code is not available.
We are not doing anything illegal, but we are trying to write third party software to support this device. Unfortunately, the company frowns on anything that they do not control, so we are forced to "hack" into it.
Hope this helps clarify any confusion I may have caused.
Anil Gupte
----- Original Message ----- From: "Rajesh Rajani" rajeshr@vsnl.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 4:47 AM Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Re: [Commercial]Wanted Linux Hacker
Hi all,
I guess we are all going off on the wrong foot here.
If Anil wants someone to hack into a linux box which is said to be proprietory, it seems that he is the wronged party since he did not
recieve
the source along with the binary as per the GPL.
Linux can be as proprietory or as open as you want. It just depends on to whom you distribute the binaries. If you don't distribute, then you can do whatever you want with the sources without giving it out to anyone.
Anyway, from what I see about Anil's requests, he wants someone to hack into a linux box and install some software. This may or may not involve writing any software. It may be more a question of finding out weaknesses in the linux distribution on the box and exploiting them. Doesn't look
like
any GPL is being violated here though the ethics may be questionable.
Just my $0.02.
Regards, Rajesh