LG violates gpl? take 2

[Henrik Nordstrom]

lör 2010-03-27 klockan 21:22 +0100 skrev Luca Olivetti:

> These tellies are virtually unbrickable: they use uboot, have a real 
> serial port in the back (with a db9 and all, no funky hidden connectors 
> or voltage levels, you can even get to a shell with the tv running) and 
> you can send the firmware (either a complete epk or just a pak) or write 
> to individual flash partitions with zmodem.

Good good.

> But I meant fry as in "fry", not as in "brick": poke the wrong value in 
> the wrong register and you can easily burn something. I reckon that's 
> virtually impossible with the sources they provided, but still..

I reckon that damage is just as easily done using the default kernel..

Most hardware is not that easy to fry even if the controlling software
does stupid things. There is levels of protection and isolation in the
hardware itself, with the "smart component" (Linux system) usually being
fairly isolated and with useful but still restricted hardware control,
with other components such as LCD screen, audio subsystem etc having
their own logics (even firmware) and signal sanity shielding.

Regards
Henrik