Possible GPL violation in Canyon CN-WF514 WLAN router [rt.gpl-violations.org #107]

[Jan Harkes]

> From: Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>
> > However, the CN-WF514 page does not have any such information.
> > 
> > Interestingly, I've analyzed the CN-WF514 about a year ago, and I could
> > find the serial console:
...
> > I've analyzed the Firmware
> > http://www.canyon-tech.com/files/Canyon/Networking/WiFi_U/CN-WF514/WF514-200713T5.zip
> > and that one is definitely not Linux.  It seems to be using a
> > linux-related bootolader or maybe even the linux uncompression code
> > (because of the "Uncompressing Linux" message).
> > Try "dd if=WF514-200713T5.img bs=8264 skip=1 | zcat >! vmlinux"

Just looked at the image, and it looks like it is an embedded RTOS

    Copyright (c) 1996-2001 Express Logic Inc. * ThreadX LX4189/Green Hills Version G4.0.4.0

However, that doesn't mean there isn't a GPL violation in there...

Also noticed 'by Angus Mackay', with some dynamic dns strings around it,
which looks like ez-ipupdate. There is also, "User-Agent: Linux DUC
1.6.0". Which indicates that the image contains the noip-1.6.0 client
from www.no-ip.com. Both of these seem to be GPL licensed.

There is also /etc/dnrd/master, which according to google is probably
the config file used by the GPL licensed 'domain name relay daemon',
http://dnrd.sourceforge.net/. Haven't dug deeper to see if there are
more strings that match this program.

These are just what a quick scan uncovered.

> > But looking at the other firmware (208, for a different hardware
> > revision), it actually is linux.  Try
> > "dd if=WF514_208.bin bs=65548 skip=1 | zcat > vmlinux"
> > and you will end up with a kernel image.
> > 
> > It seems like that that 208 firmware is for a hardware revision that
> > runs linux.

Yeah, that's the one I looked at. It looks the the MIPS hardware
revision has a Linux based firmware, while the ARM hardware model has
most likely an RTOS, but still includes several GPL applications.

Jan