Older blog entries for LaForge (starting at number 194)

HTCs delays in releasing Linux source code are unacceptable

The Taiwanese smart phone maker HTC is widely known to be delaying its Linux kernel source code releases of their Android products. Initially, this has been described to to the requirement for source code review, and making sure that no proprietary portions are ending up in the release.

While the point is sort-of moot from the beginning (there should be no proprietary portions inside the Linux kernel for a product that wants to avoid entering any legal grey zone in the first place), I was willing to accept/tolerate it for some time.

At one point more than one year ago, gpl-violations.org actually had the opportunity to speak in person to senior HTC staff about this. I made it very clear that this delay is not acceptable, and that they should quickly fix their processes in order to make sure they reduce that delay, eventually down to zero.

Recently, I received news that the opposite is happening. HTC still has the same delays, and they are now actually claiming that even a 120 days delay is in compliance with the license.

I do think neither the paying HTC customers, nor tha Free Software community as a whole have to tolerate those delays. It is true that the GPLv2 doesn't list a deadline until when the source code has to be provided, but it is at the same also very clear what the license wants: To enable people to study the program source code. Especially in todays rapid smart phone product cycles, 120 days is a very long time.

So I hereby declare my patience has ended here. I am determined to bring those outrageous delays to an end. This will be one of my new year resolutions for 2012: Use whatever means possible to make HTC understand that this is not how you can treat Free Software, the community, its customers, the GPL and in the end, copyright itself.

Syndicated 2011-12-24 01:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

More "bare iron" development: OsmoSDR, osmo-e1-xcvr and SIM bank

I'm currently quite excited to be doing more bare iron programming as well as actual electrical engineering work again.

There's actually not just one project I'm working on, but a variety of them:

  • OsmoSDR - an upcoming small form-factor, inexpensive USB SDR. Not big and expensive like USRP or real "professional" solutions, but also not as weak as the ultra-narrow-band funcube dongle. I wasn't involved in the hardware design, but have volunteered to take care of the firmware development for the Atmel SAM3U micro-controller inside.
  • osmo-e1-xcvr - a relatively simple circuit board containing the magnetics, LIU, clock generation and transceiver for E1/T1/J1 lines. The idea here is to have a solution for the analog part, as well as HDB3/B8ZS/AMI encoding, which can then be attached to any FPGA, CPLD or micro-controller development board. It exposes SPI for controlling the transceiver, and a synchronous serial bit-stream for Rx and Tx.
  • unnamed sim-bank project - here the goal is to find a cheap solution to attach a large number of SIM cards to either a PC or directly to Ethernet. This can be very useful for testing, where you host your sim cards in a centralized location and can borrow them to remote users/devices over TCP/IP. There are commercial devices available for this, but they are quite expensive (like 1700 USD for 32 card device) and intended to be used with some proprietary windows software (who wants that?!?).

In the latter two projects I'm also doing the component selection, schematics design and PCB layout. One project with KiCAD, the other in EAGLE, as I really want to get first-hand experience of the usability of Free vs. proprietary EDA tools. I'd love to also evaluate Altium Designer, but they are still windows-only, and that would just make life way too difficult for me.

The projects will be duly announced soon, and they are all intended to be Open Hardware designs with Free Software. We'll probably also make all of them available at shop.sysmocom.de, too.

Syndicated 2011-12-23 01:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Back home after successful KOSS Legal Conference

The first incarnation of the KOSS Legal Conference was a big success. There were many participants from a variety of backgrounds, such as

  • Independent Korean legal experts
  • Legal scholars from Korean law schools
  • International legal experts (e.g. Till Jaeger, Carlo Piana, etc.)
  • Representatives from the major Korean IT industry
  • Representatives of the community organizations like FSFE
  • Independent technical experts like Armijn Hemel and myself

The discussions have been a big success, with significant participation from the floor. There are many events that I attended where it was hard to actually get any participation from the audience - but the KOSS Law conference was definitely not one of them. Some of the questions were easy to respond to, some other questions really tackled the difficult issues in Free Software License Compliance.

What was clear to see from the Industry participants: FOSS License Compliance has become an important topic in the last couple of years: One the one hand as a result of virtually no TV set / mobile phone / PMP or other device running without Linux or other FOSS. On the other hand, I'm sure that the enforcement efforts of gpl-violations.org and the SFLC also have had significant impact on that.

What I personally find important is that compliance is only considered as part of the overall FOSS picture. Complying with the license text is the minimum that companies involved with FOSS should do. Rather, they should look beyond mere compliance and consider the benefit of engaging more actively with the community, contribute code back upstream/mainline and really becoming a first-class citizen of the Free Software world.

As a big surprise to everyone, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation made a surprise visit towards the end of the second day of the conference.

Many thanks to the KOSS Law center for bringing this together and organizing such an event. Thanks also to the Korean NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency) and the FSFE for their support of the event.

Syndicated 2011-11-28 01:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Some thoughts on the Erlang User Conference 2011

It seems I'm really getting too lazy to update this blog more frequently, which is a pity. Last week I was in Stockholm attending the Erlang User Conference 2011. This was the first Erlang conference I ever went to, and it was the first conference in many, many years where I was not speaking but merely a normal attendee.

Some of the readers of this blog will already have noticed my microblogging updates on identi.ca and Twitter that I made during the conference. They were not overly excited about the conference. Let me write some more details here. I have no idea how many technical conferences I have attended, but I am typically speaking at something like 10 to 14 every year, which I believe qualifies me as a "professional conference participant" ;)

Let me start with some positive feedback: There have been excellent and technical presentations, particularly by Kostis Sagonas (PropEr), Melinda Toth (Change impact analysis) and also the talk on Hashes/Frames/Structs as new built-in Erlang data types by Kenneth Lundin.

However, apart from those, i have quite a bit of criticism:

  • Some presentations ended way ahead of their schedule.
    This is a pity, as it means that some hundred-odd highly paid software developers are then sitting in a room and wasting time. If you hold a presentation at a conference, you should make sure that this time is used in the most efficient way. If you have been allocated a 45 minute slot, please don't make a 15 minute presentation + 5 minute questions session. That's not what the audience expects!
  • Keynote presentation by Ulf Wiger contained lots of hot air
    If I go to a technical conference aimed at Erlang users (i.e. software developers who write programs using the Erlang language, libraries and runtime system), then I expect it to be loaded with brilliant, technical content. I want to get excited about new developments, Erlang software projects, etc. The last thing that I'd want is having a real Erlang guru on stage talking about superficial, trivial aspects of embedded computing. Of course I respect the commercial decision of Ulf and/or Erlang Solutions to try to create a market for Erlang in the embedded sphere. But what is the technical relevance of this to the Erlang community? Ulf did not talk about great new schemes of optimizing the Erlang VM for battery-powered CPUs, or how he has extended powertop to give function or line-level accuracy on which of your Erlang code lines burn most CPU cycles or cause the highest number of CPU wake-ups from low power mode. That would have been exciting.
  • Erlang/OTP Road-map presentation without much technical details
    When I see a slide with "Some SCTP improvements" then I want to see what exactly are those improvements. I think there was more than enough time to go into more details, if Kenneth would have spoken faster and put more content into the available time. Once again, the audience is a room full of intelligent, highly-paid professional software engineers. If you get their attention for whatever amount of time, I believe you should pack it as full with information as possible, rather than bore them with slowly and carefully reading each line from a slide...
  • No Internet available at the Tutorials Can you believe it? In 2011, a technical conference aimed at software developers hosts tutorials inside a facility owned by one of the largest communications equipment suppliers (Ericsson) and then there is no provision for Internet access. It's really ironic, especially since at least some of the tutorial trainers expected the attendees would be able to clone git repositories on their laptops during the workshops.

In my hallway conversations with other attendees (who also have a background outside of Erlang and are more familiar with other conferences in the FOSS community), they independently observed those very same issues and agreed with my assessment.

All in all, the conference was a good trigger for me to finally sit down and start to use dialyzer on the various Osmcoom Erlang-language projects such as osmo_ss7, osmo_sscp and signerl. I'm already adding type specifications all over the code and am looking forward to soon starting with some PropEr test cases in the next couple of days.

Syndicated 2011-11-08 01:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Going to attend Korean FOSS legal conference

Recently I had been invited by the Korean Open Source Software (KOSS) Law Center to attend their 2011 KOSS conference scheduled for November 17 and 18 in Seoul, Korea.

This conference is organized by the KOSS Law Center with support by the Korean Government (National IT Industry Promotion Agency). Its primary purpose is to share best practises in terms of FOSS licensing, license compliance but also FOSS community interaction within the Korean IT industry and the public sector.

I'm happy to present on Beyond Legal Compliance - Embracing the FOSS community, where I will outline that the primary focus should not be on to-the-letter legal compliance, but to a proactive way of interacting with the FOSS community. After all, collaborative development is what FOSS is all about...

However, due to a schedule conflict with the DeepSec 2011 conference in Vienna (where I'm giving a two-day GSM security workshop), I'm only able to attend the second day of the KOSS conference.

The speaker line-up for the KOSS conference is quite impressive, and it includes Karsten Gerloff (FSFE), Till Jaeger (JBB), Carlo Piana (FSFE), Keith Bergelt (OIN), Armijn Hemel (gpl-violations.org/Tjaldur) and others.

Unfortunately there seems to be no homepage, at least none with an English language title that Google would be able to find. Carlo Piana has mentioned the event in his blog four days ago.

Syndicated 2011-11-08 01:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Upcoming GSM Security Training at DeepSec

Dieter Spaar and I will be holding yet another GSM security training on November 15/16 at this years DeepSec conference in Vienna.

We have been giving a series of successful GSM Security trainings in-house at various operators, as well as at a variety of conferences during the last couple of years. If you want to beef up your knowledge on the detailed inner workings of mobile networks, with a specific focus on security related aspects, this training might be a great opportunity.

You can register here. Unfortunately the Early Bird discount has already expired, but you still have a chance to book before November 2nd, after which a late booking fee will apply.

Syndicated 2011-10-17 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

First OsmocomGMR code release

The OsmocomGMR project. GMR is Geo Mobile Radio, the specifications for (among others) the Thuraya satellite telephone network.

For more details see the OsmocomGMR announcement.

I still remember some years ago, when Dieter and I were first working on some code to implement the GSM protocols, which later ended up becoming OpenBSC. A number of other developers joined the project ever since, and we have a wide user base, from individuals over academia up to commercial deployments. Next we did GRPS, which was another journey into a new world. While OsmoSGSN still has some bugs here and there, it has come a long way ever since.

In December 2010 at 27C3 I had this crazy idea of looking into yet another communications system (TETRA). Just one week of coding later, the first working code emerged and later became OsmocomTETRA. Again, history repeated itself and what was started by one person became a collaborative effort in very short time.

Finally, in July 2011, I thought it would be time for yet another communications system: ETSI GMR, used by Thuraya. This time I was too busy to actually write any code, but I just read specifications, found a supplier for some equipment and got some fellow Osmocom developers interested in it. For weeks, the IRC channel was flooded with daily reports about progress, new measurements/traces that had been made and about new code that had been written. About three months later, the code is capable of demodulating, decoding, de-interleaving, and it can give you a BCCH protocol trace in wirshark.

With this pace of progess, I wonder where we might be in yet another one or two years. At least on my personal agenda are the following items:

  • Finish Erlang TCAP + MAP implementation, which will allow us to implement a true HLR/AUC and finally a new MSC that can interoperate with GSM/3G core networks
  • Integrate OpenBSC and OpenBTS, especially now that we already have the BTS-side A-bis implementation as part of osmo-bts
  • Get funding to implement a GPRS/EDGE PCU, enabling osmo-bts to talk to OsmoSGSN
  • Work on some hardware+software interface that allows us to use the Motorola Horizon Macro BTS with OpenBSC, or at least their TRXs (called CTU) with osmo-bts
  • Implement a UMA/GAN gateway (for UMA capable phones and femtocells)
  • Support IuCS/IuPS from our MSC and SGSN for 3G Femtocells
  • Complete the SIMtrace firmware/software to do full MITM and SIM card emulation
  • Work on automated regression testing for osmo-bts, OpenBSC, OsmoSGSN and all other GSM related Osmocom components.
  • Continue the excellent work that has been done on supporting MTK chipsets from OsmocomBB at some point

At least now you know there is never any reason to be bored. If you have time and are interested in helping with implementing any of this stuff, let me know.

Syndicated 2011-10-16 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

FOSS.in is dead, PRODUCTISE.in lives

Team FOSS.in has announced lest year that the successful series of FOSS.in conferences has concluded. I'm still a bit sad that I was unable to make it to the grand finale.

But now, the very same team announces a new event called PRODUCTISE.in, with a different focus. It's not about Free and Open Source Software anymore, but about product developers - where the respective products of course could be FOSS based.

I remain curios to see what will happen to the event. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm probably a slightly pragmatic but otherwise orthodox Free Software fellow. As far as I can tell, the only proprietary software that I use (and license) in more than a decade is IDA Advanced.

But in any case, all the best to Team FOSS.in with their latest endeavour!

Syndicated 2011-10-15 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

Ground-breaking research on APCO P25 security

While we at OsmocomTETRA have been looking only at implementing the TETRA protocols as they are (and doing a bit of sniffing on unencrypted networks), some researchers have recently published two ground-breaking papers on the (lack of) security in the APCO P25 radio system.

In case you haven't heard about APCO P25: It is a digital mobile radio system mainly used by Police in non-EU English speaking countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand.

You can find the respective papers here and here.

So apparently P25 uses either single-DES or a proprietary cipher with only 40 bit key-length. No, I'm not joking. Seems like it was developed by people who have not the slightest clue about communications security at all.

And guess what they used to receive and transmit P25 waveforms? Of course the USRP and gnuradio. This once again proves how invaluable those tools are, not just for the FOSS community, but also for the communications research community.

Syndicated 2011-09-18 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

I'm still alive - short update...

In the last two months I barely found time to update this blog. I'm now back on track and will try to update the blog more frequently.

The CCC Camp 2011 has been great, and the OpenBSC based camp GSM network has been a success, despite some initial problems. Thanks again to everyone helping with the build-up and operation of it, and thanks for all our volunteer users/testers.

Most of the time since I've been buried alive in work, almost exclusively related to various sub-projects surrounding the Osmocom GSM protocol implementations. We're working on every level of the protocol stack at the same time, and on network elements from BTS, BSC up well into the core network, media gateways, etc.

Most recently I've been doing some work with

Syndicated 2011-09-18 02:00:00 from Harald Welte's blog

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