10 common misunderstandings about the GPL

I'd just like to point out the excellent article on 10 common misunderstandings about the GPL by Bruce Byfield.

Meanwhile I'm still working in India, just returned back from Mumbai to Bangalore. Two more days and I'll be back to Germany. For one week, at least.

Wanted: Author and/or sources for EZX "qonsole" application

The original author of the KDE "Konsole" program, Lars Doelle, is actively looking for the Author and/or the source code of the "qonsole" program, a terminal program for the Motorola EZX platform that is apparently derived from GPL licensed Konsole.

Since the legal status of qonsole never was clear, I always refused to host it on any of the OpenEZX project resources. I didn't really know of any GPL violation going on, but had a somewhat strange feeling.

If any of you has information on where the qonsole program originates, please make sure to inform either Lars or me about it. We know by now that it appears to originate from some chinese or singapore mobile phone forums.

It's good to see more software authors of GPL licensed programs actually caring about enforcement of their license :) I sincerely hope this can be resolved and qonsole either distributed in gpl-compliant way, or a re-implementation be found/made.

GPLv3 conference in bangalore

It's already four days ago, but I just couldn't find some time to write about it in this blog. The 4th international conference on GPLv3, held in Bangalore/India.

I've been to three of those four confrences now, and I guess that makes me the only one apart from the FSF to judge how it actually went, compared to other events.

And I'm sorry that I have to say that it was by far the worst of these events :(

• They closed down registration at some fixed limit (270?) because the auditorium couldn't hold more people. However, since the registration was free, only 50% fo the people who registered were actually present. And this at the expense of people apparently have been turned away after the quota was filled. Now we had a half-empty auditorium, and people who wanted to come but were rejected.
• The programme. Basically RMS and Eben did not only give there usual (every time updated) great presentations on the spirit and the wording of the current license draft. But then they were kept alone on the stage to reply to questions for about the same time. Nobody else but them was giving any presentations on something that is really GPLv3 related.
• The panels. What is the point of a "business panel" if all(most) you have represented there is some small three-men-in-a-garage companies that are run by free software enthusiasts? Where have beeen the Infosys, Wipro, ... companies? Don't they have something to say about the GPLv3?
• The audience. How can you come to a conference on the GPLv3 and then ask questions that
  • everybody knows will upset rms because they use Linxu with no GNU/ in front
  • are totally unrelated (how can I make Autocad work on Linux
  • reveal that you haven't even bothered reading the GPLv3 draft
  Where were the GPL-savyy lawyers, free software developers and industry representatives that had made their way to the Barcelona and Porto Alegre event?
• The [non-existing] moderation. Why was there nobody stopping all that off-topic crap like endless discussions on why gnucash isn't conforming the Indian accounting standards. I'm sure those are important problems to be adressed (and somebody should just hack that code into gnucash if he has a need for it). But who the hell cares about this on a conference specialized to license questions?

Getting a Simputer

Today I've been paying a short visit to Geodesic Information System Ltd. Bangalore Group (formerly PicoPeta Software), one of the two companies behind the Indian Simputer project.

Now most of the readers of this blog will probably think "oh, that computer for poor Indians", which is just not true, but the result of both media (and some government officials) misrepresenting the idea of this project.

Anyway, they'll give me one of their high-end Amida models to hack a bit on them. I guess one of the first thing I'll want to do is to create an OpenEmbedded machine description and kernel package for it, in order to be able to use all the available OE packages on it.

This is _not at all_ to say that I dislike the software that is pre-installed in the device (which provides a top-of-world-class and extremely unique user interface). But it's extremely useful to be able to choose between the pre-installed software and existing software packaged in OpenEmbedded. Maybe some of the existing GPL (or otherwise free licensed) Simputer software can be packaged as OE ipk packages and then be seamlessly integrated.

Off for two weeks of India (GPLv3 Conference Bangalore, plus some Mumbai)

I'm off for two weeks of India. The first hop will be the 4th GPLv3 Conference held in Bangalore. After that, I'll be relaxing for a few days at my friend Atul's place, only to go for some business appointment in Mumbai, before finally returning on Sept 3rd.

As usual. I'll be working "on the road", but expect delay in email replies.

Allnet Allsound / U-Media AudioMate

I couldn't resist any longer to buy a Allnet Allsound aka U-Media AudioMate, basically a small 802.11 WLAN capable Internet streaming radio stand alone receiver. Something that you can just put into your kitchen / bedroom. It hooks up to your WLAN and plays MP3 radio streams stand alone. No running computer / hard disk / server / ... required. IT also seems to support UPnP A/V, but I yet have to look into some Free server software for this.

Oh and yes, you can actually use it as alarm clock, waking you with tunes of your favorite Internet streaming radio. How cool is that?

Bollywood / Hindi-pop Web-radio: Radio Teentaal

I've recently discovered Radio Teentaal, a web-radio dedicated to "100% Indian music" - being streamed live from Paris.

It's certainly no surprise to see the radio being shoutcasted from some western country, since [that kind of] bandwidth is still not really affordable in India. But it's surprising to me that it's not from UK, US, Canada or another English-speaking country with large NRI community.

Anyway, they seem to play the latest popular Bollywood beats, no commercials, no interruptions, not even one the otherwise omnipresent self-advertisement jingles. Just pure music, at 128kBps stereo mp3.

OpenPCD - A free 13.56MHz RFID reader design

Over the last weeks I've been working together with Milosch and Brita from bitmanufaktur.de on OpenPCD, a Free Software and Free Hardware design of an RFID reader for popular 13.56MHz based protocols such as ISO 14443 and ISO 15693.

The hardware design will be released under a CC attribution share-alike license, the reader firmware and drivers (librfid glue code, plus some extras) will be released under GNU GPL.

We now have our first fully functional prototype, happily reading ePassport samples and the like.

In addition to being free (and being able to controlling the bare hardware because of the firmware source code) this reader gives an unique opportunity to study RFID signalling, since various analogue and digital test signals are available on headers or (currently BNC, later U.FL) receptacles.

Also, this device can be used to generate arbitrary modulation patterns, with full user control on frequency, modulation width, depth, etc.

We're currently too busy to release the code and docs in an appropriate way, but my hope is that you'll be able to check out a first release within the next two weeks.

The next goal is a similarly 100% free RFID PICC (transponder side) simulator. We're already working on this for some time, but I don't want to blow too much of the good news weeks before you will be able to actually check out the code and hw design. Stay tuned..

Oh, and not to cause misunderstandings: Some time ago I was mentioning that I'd be working on an incredibly cool Linux project in China. This RFID stuff is _not_ what I was talking about, even though I still think it is extremely cool ;)

more u-boot S3C2410 work

I've spent some more time on u-boot S3C2410 support. We now have working NAND flash and MMC+SD support. I'll publish patches soon, probably next week.

Apart from that, I'm extremely busy.. mostly doing real work, but also with boring gpl-violations.org stuff. Too little time to keep this blog up to date as much as before, my apologies.

CCC Berlin now proud owner of USRP

Finally the Berlin Section of the CCC has managed to obtain some donations (courtesy of ) for the purchase of a USRP with all major front-ends (BasicRX, BasicTX, RFX2400, RFX1800, RFX900, DBSRX, ..).

I sincerely hope that this device will be able to fuel even more interest in RF communications and research of security aspects of popular RF systems such as DECT. At least a bunch of interested hackers now have all the tools they need :)