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Re: gEDA-user: Languages etc



On Friday 23 September 2005 11:08 pm, Stephen Meier wrote:
> I tried to do this the humerous way. Now I will try a second way. The
> person writting the code gets to deside the language/tools. It is a
> really simple rule. If you think your favorite tool is the best way,
> well cool, prove it by doing it. ya know.. walk the talk. 

Well, OK. I agree if you talk the talk, walk the walk. I have not contributed 
to the gEDA project other than a user. However, I have contributed to a 
couple of open source projects as my time has allowed me to. To be specific, 
I pretty much rewrote FIIN, which is was the beginnings of tool used to 
examine and extract compressed files images that are contained in parent 
files.  It's been renamed liftimage. Now that it's stable, it is mainly used 
to find and extract compressed embedded images contained in the firmware. 
Some users are using it to see if the firmware is based on the Linux kernel 
or includes other open source software. Some use it for reverse engineering 
purposes.

I suppose this is a good a place as any to make this announcement: Just 
yesteday, I discovered that Axcelerra (Formally Adaptive Broadband) is using 
the Linux kernel in the 5GHz wireless product (Their Helium Mac Modem) which 
is used in urban areas as a last mile solution by a lot of ISP's. They charge 
$ for the firmware and upgrades and won't release the source code...

As a side note, liftimage is also used to inspect and extract malicious code 
embedded in parent files (Trojans, viruses and ect...). You can also use to 
to extract the password from network gear such as Cisco routers, Lucent 
CBX-500 and ect...  There are still a couple of things that need to be done 
to the code, but none of them are show stoppers. Want a copy? 

Currently as time permits I am working on bdsl2jtag which is a part of
jtag tools. I am massaging the code to correctly parse Altera and Lattice bsdl 
files. The Altera portion is almost complete. I have not begun the Lattice 
part just yet. If you would like a copy of what I've got done so far,
I can send this to you as well.

> have a hudge amount of apprectiation for Arles, Dan, DJ, Stuart, Steve,
> Stuart and others. They have written a lot of usefull code. It might not
> be written with the best language. It might not be of the best style.
> But it works and it is very usefull. For those of this group, not
> including the pcb team, can you find a way to accept donations? I would
> love to send each of you enough cash to take your significant other out
> to a good resteraunt.
>
> Again... Thanks for the code,

I have no idea what I said that makes you think I said the code should be
re-written in language-x. Oh well. Regardless of what you think I said, I'm 
entitled to my opinion just as your are.

Regards

Marvin

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