Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 10 Feb 2004 11:20:07 -0800 | From | Matthew Dharm <> | Subject | Re: Kernel GPL Violations and How to Research |
| |
On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 10:53:50PM -0600, Gidon wrote: > So what I am writing to ask, is what is the best way to ascertain > whether or not a binary (in this case a "kernel image" of this project) > contains GPL'd code or functions. So far I have found nearly a hundred > identical (down to formatting specifiers, punctuation, etc.) or nearly > identical error messages that consistently match areas of Linux i386 > arch specific kernel code or drivers as well as matching function names, > using the "strings" program on their Kernel image.
Usually for me, the next step is to disassemble their object code for symbol information using objdump.
You should be able to get some function names, variable names, etc. from that -- if those match the kernel code in question, that's about as good a "smoking gun" as you can expect to find. 'strings' isn't as good for function names.
As a final level of analysis, you can always look at the compiled binary code -- if you think they are using a _reasonably_ compatible compiler, you might actually be able to find long sections of identical or near-identical assembly (modulo loop unrolling, etc. which you should be able to identify by hand.)
Matt
-- Matthew Dharm Home: mdharm-usb@one-eyed-alien.net Maintainer, Linux USB Mass Storage Driver
It's monday. It must be monday. -- Greg User Friendly, 5/4/1998 [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |