Legal situation

[viva astoria]

> Serg wrote:
> 
>> Another alternative, chosen by "western" FOS community is to pretend that
>> they never seen the TI code and fully reverse engineered the software to
>> run on Calypso chipset. This is the OsmocomBB approach.
> 
> Except that in the case of OsmocomBB it can be very easily proven that
> not only have they seen TI's code, but made critical and essential use
> of it, and not just any TI code, but the one specific version which
> they very adamantly denied using, the version from a company with an
> 'O' and an 'M' in its name:
> 
> https://www.freecalypso.org/pipermail/community/2017-April/000361.html
> 
> viva astoria <viva.astoria at yandex.ru> wrote:
> 
>> Wait... Are you talking about the firmware or about the specifications
> 
> The specific paragraph you replied to was about the firmware. The
> firmware source has been publicly available and practically usable for
> a long time (it was me who took the available scattered, fragmented
> and not directly usable leaks and transformed them into a practically
> usable product), and many sane people in the world (including governments
> of progressive countries like Iran) are already using it quite happily,
> but a few backward people are restricting themselves from using this
> firmware by their own free will because they are scared witless than
> some dead ghost of TI might come and sue them. The paragraph you
> replied to was addressed to such people.
> 
>> or about the specifications (i. e. what commands for the TI processor
>> are available and what they do)?
> 
> The documentation in the form of written prose (as opposed to code)
> that I am aware of is very incomplete, for many essential chipset
> functions the only available documentation is the known working
> reference firmware code.
> 
>> If you are talking about some firmware whose source already exists since it
>> leaked from TI, and the chip already exists as well, then what is FreeCalypso
>> project actually doing?
> 
> Two things:
> 
> 1. Building new board-level hardware with Calypso chips, as none of
> the pre-existing phones and modems are suitable for what I am
> interested in.
> 
> 2. Maintaining our own production firmware based on the source leaks
> from TI. The leaks in themselves are static frozen artifacts,
> whereas a living software/firmware project needs to be actively
> maintained.

Then I have the following impression and question: it seems to me that the newly developed firmware is neither information-safer than the original TI firmware (because it contains the same code; previously this code was compiled by TI, now it is compiled by FreeCalypso, but the source code is the same), nor legally safer than the original TI firmware? Is that wrong? Did FreeCalypso team actually read and inspect the whole parts of code written by TI?

(This is also one of the reasons why I am asking about the specifications: if there are specifications, maybe not in the form of verbal prose, but in the form of "this low-level chip command changes chip memory this way, and this low-level chip command sends this signal to the actual network", and someone is developing firmware with the intent of making it open-source from the start, then there is much more hope that this someone will not put spying or information unsafe code, than in the case when the code was not initially intended to be seen by everyone.)

>> I've seen something about hardware development at FreeCalypso website.
>> My impression was that the project is going to develop a new GSM chip [...]
> 
> Not a chip, but board-level hardware. Unless you are going to eat
> them, chips by themselves are not particularly useful, one also needs
> a working product board with those chips on it in order to have a
> practically usable product. I make the latter:
> 
> https://www.freecalypso.org/fcdev3b.html
> 
> M~
> _______________________________________________
> Community mailing list
> Community at freecalypso.org
> https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community