DSM320 / DSM320RD media center using GPL libs in closed source app

Jose Bernardo Silva jose.bandos at gmail.com
Tue Dec 12 08:56:47 CET 2006


Hello,
I've been trying to edit DLink's DSM320RD firmware, and found out that
they claim to have complied with the GPL by posting the source to the
GPLed code they use, and keeping the rest closed source
(ftp://ftp.dlink.de/dsm/DSM-320RD/driver_software/DSM320RD_GPL_release-Sources_ALL_en.tgz).
What I've found out is that DLink made available on their servers the
source for the kernel patches they applied, for busybox and a couple
other apps, but didn't supply the bootloader or the source for the
main apps, dmaosd, mms and DMARender. I managed to extract the cramfs
image using this script:
http://www.jumbuk.com/mods/dsm-320/dsm320.v4.txt. Then I mounted it,
found a ext2 formatted ramdisk.gz loopbad fs inside, mounted it and
discovered the closed source apps. Doing a simple ldd on these files,
I found out they are dynamically linked with a couple GPL libs:
dmaosd app is dynamically linked to the following libs:
librmcaribbeanapi.so => not found
libmatrixssl.so => not found
libdl.so.0 => /opt/toolchain/arm/gcc-3.2/toolchain/lib/libdl.so.0
libm.so.0 => /opt/toolchain/arm/gcc-3.2/toolchain/lib/libm.so.0
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0
libc.so.0 => /opt/toolchain/arm/gcc-3.2/toolchain/lib/libc.so.0
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6
ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2
/lib/ld-uClibc.so.0 => /lib/ld-uClibc.so.0

And other two apps (mms and DMAREnder) to these:
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0
libm.so.0 => /opt/toolchain/arm/gcc-3.2/toolchain/lib/libm.so.0
libc.so.0 => /opt/toolchain/arm/gcc-3.2/toolchain/lib/libc.so.0
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6
ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2
/lib/ld-uClibc.so.0 => /lib/ld-uClibc.so.0

Can this be another GPL violation by DLink? Can we ask them to comply
with the GPL and release the source code for these apps so one can
have all the tools needed to edit and perfect the firmware?
Thank you.



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