Re: gEDA-user: Languages etc

[Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 11:48:39PM -0400, Marvin Dickens wrote:
> 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...

I have already forced Coraccess to promise they release under GPL if
the juridically invincible text they sent can be treated as promise...

Don't bother to send the company anything - send a mail straight to
http://gpl-violations.org/

From the responses I got I got a feeling that these companies just want
to cheat and if you poke at it, they try to conceal it as much as
possible (delay e-mails, do irrelevant responses, use a language that
can't be used against them in court)...

CL<

> 
> 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