Hi all,
As some of you may know, I'm trying to build a GNUradio receiver for Outernet, partly by reverse engineering their binary-only code.
While examining this code, I've noted that this code is using librtlsdr and libmirisdr, which are licenced under the GPLv2 or later (and not LGPL). It is my understanding that this forces the binary-only code to be released under a GPL-compatible licence.
More info: http://pastebin.com/ENCYejn8
Can someone with legal experience tell whether am I right in my interpretation of the licences?
Also, does anyone have the contact information for Outernet? I tried to contact the user "foxbunny" in Github, who is the main contributor to the Github repos of Outernet. However, he no longer works at Outernet.
I know that some of you are having fun with the Outernet receiver, and I don't want to discourage anyone from doing so. However, I think that it is in agreement with the Ham Radio spirit to be able to learn how the technology works. Currently, the key software pieces of the Outernet receiver are closed-source.
Recently, only after some nontrivial reverse engineering effort I could figure out the scrambler they use. It turns out it's a scrambler algorithm I hadn't heard about before, so there I learnt something: https://twitter.com/ea4gpz/status/785586536225976320
Also, I think that in particular librtlsdr (the code that makes RTL-SDR receivers work) has given hams uncountable hours of enjoyment with these low cost SDR receivers. Therefore, we should support the fact that this software is GPL and try to protect it from anyone who wishes to abuse its licence.
I think that the Outernet project would benefit from releasing all their software under a free software (open source) licence, and I told that to Thane Richard from Outernet when he first announce the project on amsat-bb almost a year ago.
73,
Dani EA4GPZ.