Possible GPL license violation by Supermicro

[Eki]

Hi,

I noticed earlier this year that Supermicro's IPMI card
binary only firmware contains some interesting strings:

 No Linux ARM Ramdisk Image
    Loading Ramdisk to %08lx, end %08lx ...
 Starting kernel ...
 U-Boot 1.0.0 (Aug  8 2006 - 10:04:18)

 Linux-2.4.19-rmk4

I contacted Supermicro several times, asking for source code
for the firmware, as it seems that it uses the Linux kernel.

The only response I got from their US technical support was
something like "our firmware is based on Java, we do not need
to release it" :)

They do have a Java based http GUI on the IPMI card, but I
seriously doubt that the firmware itself is written in Java.

Here are links for the two different IPMI firmware images
if somebody wants to take a closer look:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/CDR-SIMIPMI_1.10_for_SIM_IPMI/Firmware/ubsim129.bin
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/CDR-SIMIPMI_1.10_for_SIM_IPMI/Firmware/ugsim129.bin

Thanks,

Erkki Hoikka