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Hackaday sounds the alarm and along with ThinkPenguin, the EFF, FSF, Software Freedom Law Center, Software Freedom Conservancy, OpenWRT, LibreCMC, Qualcomm, and others have created the SaveWiFi campaign (archive.is capture, real link is at this overloaded server) , providing instructions on how to submit a formal complaint to the FCC regarding this proposed rule. The comment period is closing on September 8, 2015.
From Hackaday:
Under the rule proposed by the FCC, devices with radios may be required to prevent modifications to firmware. All devices operating in the 5GHz WiFi spectrum will be forced to implement security features to ensure the radios cannot be modified. While prohibiting the modification of transmitters has been a mainstay of FCC regulation for 80 years, the law of unintended consequences will inevitably show up in full force: because of the incredible integration of electronic devices, this proposed regulation may apply to everything from WiFi routers to cell phones. The proposed regulation would specifically ban router firmwares such as DD-WRT, and may go so far as to include custom firmware on your Android smartphone.
A lot is on the line. The freedom to modify devices you own is a concern, but the proposed rules prohibiting new device firmware would do much more damage. The economic impact would be dire, the security implications would be extreme, and emergency preparedness would be greatly hindered by the proposed restrictions on router firmware. The FCC is taking complaints and suggestions until September 8th.
Leave a comment for the FCC via this link to the Federal Register
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:33PM
Wild speculation here, IANAL.
The firmware contains gpl stuff?
then one cannot distribute it if you cannot assure freedom is preserved, right?
And what about an OS? if the firmware does not allow to meddle with the OS and the OS contains GPL stuff, you cannot redistribute things on such a closed system.
If what I said makes sense, then the contest about who's more free between the GPL and the various BSD, MIT licenses has found a winner.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:40PM
Sure you can. You can openly distribute the firmware source but still require the router to only accept trusted, cryptographically signed firmware bins. The firmware is open source, it does not mean that the hardware has to accept ANY firmware. This is already done all over the place with phones, network gear, etc.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jummama on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:48PM
GPL3 was introduced with specific verbiage to mandate that the user is allowed to make changes, and actually use them on the device that it is inteded for because of a loophole that Tivo was taking advantage of. I don't remember if it was a simple checksum or a cryptographic signature, but they had a Linux kernel and filesystem in their EEPROM, with a boot loader checking for this signature/checksum. If this signature/checksum didn't match the official retail EEPROM, then it would refuse to boot. They had stuck to the letter of GPL2 by releasing the source, but violated the spirit of it by disallowing anyone from actually making changes to it on the device. Unfortunately, the Linux kernel licensing was/is specifically under GPL2, not "GPL2 or later", and there are too many contributors to contact, so it was never upgraded to GPL3. With the kernel being the most likely used GPL component in these types of devices, a locked device that disallows firmware changes can still be compliant, unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday September 04 2015, @10:15AM
I've been arguing for a while that a key derived from a GPL work is a derived work, and that a key included in a GPL work is "preferred source", because it's obviously needed to build the final image. This would obviously break repo-style package signing, too, but it's closer to the wording of the GPL than the assumption that the built image can magically be transmogrified during distribution without honouring the licence.
I wonder why no one picked that up yet and followed through with a precedent setting case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @02:34PM
Linus' unwillingness to adopt GPL3 was mosy likely the primary reason.