Possible GPL violation by Kyocera Multi-Functional Printer KM-1820

[mr]

You have been given a copy of some firmware that someone claims to be
distributed by Kyocera to its own employees? Perhaps you should confirm if
this is indeed also something that Kyocera distributes to their customers
before making gpl claims.. Kyocera is perfectly entitled to distribute GPL
software within the company without making the source available to the
general public provided they are not also including binaries of said
software on devices sold to the public. For example, google makes extensive
use of Free Software without distributing the source code or the
modifications because they are only using it internally.

You need to confirm that they are using GPL software on the hardware that is
distributed to the public and not also giving access to the source before
making any claims. Have you asked them for it?

Alan

On 2/25/07, nurweiterso at gmx.de <nurweiterso at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> someone gave me a copy of the firmware that is distributed by Kyocera to
> their technicians and (I guess) is installed on every MFP.
> The ZIP includes a initrd.bin, ppcboot.bin, rootdiskimage.cramfs,
> setupdiskimage.cramfs and zImage.kmmfp.
>
> The device seems to include a PowerPC. The zImage.kmmfp seems to be a
> standard linux kernel for PPC, at least the file includes text like:
> Uncompressing Linux
> Now booting the kernel
> bad gzipped data
>
> I wasn't able to uncompress the kernel image zImage.kmmfp yet. BTW: Can
> someone please propose a how-to?
>
> When I mount the *.cramfs I found several GPL'ed software:
> + busybox
> + libncurses
> + libcrypt
> + appletalk/ipddp.o
> + pam_unix
> + dhclient
> + libext2fs
> + samba
> + cups
> + cron
>
> The file motd includes:
> Welcome to MontaVista Linux 3.0, Professional Edition
>
> so I guess this firmware is based on this distro.
>
> What's about the GPL?
> I don't believe they wrote the Linux kernel and the other software from
> scratch.
>
> What should I do next?
>
> Kind regards
>
>
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