Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:12:39 GMT | From | John Bradford <> | Subject | Re: Binary-only firmware covered by the GPL? |
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> > But think about: why can we distribute assembler only code in linux > > kernel? It's near to binary form (objdump -d is your friend). > > It's not. The difference is that we can always insert another asm > statement anywhere (of course changing the way the function works) > and still have it assemble and unless we goofed up it'll still run. > mov ax,ax for instance won't do a thing. We can insert that > anywhere we wish without changing anything. The assembler will take > care of any relative jumps and pointers but with a binary firmware, > try to insert a byte into it (not CHANGE one, INSERT one), even > if you know just insert a NOP somewhere - and see what happens.
Then why didn't the original programmer leave a patch space to allow for such modifications? Surely that could be considered part of the 'preferred form'.
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