AmpBenzScientist @AmpBenzScientist@qoto.org

Many years ago I was jokingly called Will Hunting because I was a talented Mathematician who worked as a Custodian. How about them apples?

I've been going through a rough period for the past couple of years and all the small things are catching up with me. I did research on RISC-V for my former University without pay or credit and it was alongside a doctor. I stirred up a different department on collaboration with CompSci and kept pushing FLOSS. I was effectively forced out before the talks could start so someone likely got credited with what I did.

In life I'm looked at as a failure, someone who had a bright future from a bad background. Sometimes I look back at those who ended up being successful and wonder what factors played a role in their success.

I'm not eligible for many careers because of my lack of a BS Degree. For a double Major in Mathematics and Computer Science with a minor in Cybersecurity with experience in the fields of all the above. I wasn't able to pay tuition or get a good paying job and had to quit during my senior year.

@PawelK @hn50 The USA and China have a lot to benefit from this if they wanted such a system. China could use a similar module as their Hypersonic missile, which was operational before Russia's missile, to provide multi role strikes, targeting and guidance. The USA might develop a more sophisticated version as a yeet defense against Hypersonic missiles. The B2 was thought to be unstoppable too but filling the air with AA flack brought it down.

I gave the information about the original source code to Nutcracker members. I'm going to let them have this one. I got asked if I had uploaded any source code and I said no. Luckily I have time stamped information from here and posts. They will give credit.

I also found Nordic Semiconductor code in the Bluetooth stack, same with Intel. It makes sense that it's APLV2. The question remains whether it's right to be able to use open source software to create closed source software. Morally it's worse than theft, it's salting the earth.

Sometimes companies need to learn how hard the FLOSS community can hit back. I saw an impressive amalgamation of several different RTOS projects and resources that were mostly licensed by APLV2 or BSD. The collective work of these being ported is not open source.

A private company recruited volunteers to Reverse Engineer the firmware and it has been about 2 years of work without being completed.

@PawelK @hn50 Zastava.

@PawelK @hn50 The CCCP did the same thing with an American designed Sidewinder. It advanced their missile technology by at least a decade according to the Soviet Scientists.

The trick is to Reverse Engineer, document and make the system far more capable than the design could have ever been. But yes, it's fair game and so is Russia's new tank technology. Possibly their Kalashnikov weapons too, seems dumb but the modern AK 100 series makes the the AK74 look like a

XRadio Technology for the at blob source. FreeRTOS, lwip and others for wifi blob. Zephyr for Bluetooth blob.

That's the answer. There's more to it than that but I don't want to type away. I don't know why this wasn't made available sooner. XRadio makes Wifi and bluetooth MCUs and SOCs. Their code was used in the source code of the BL602. Nearly everything is licensed as Apache License v2.0 so if some code was proprietary then it's not an issue.

I cared a lot about this project and it meant a lot to me. Now it's over. There is no reason why the code couldn't be released.

All or most of the object files are from various open source firmware projects. The source code available and the object file names will almost perfectly match the original source.

Why are the object files not released? I don't know why but they are mostly available on github with the correct License. They have been modified for this project.

The strange part is looking at what is missing. The blobs are essential parts of their roles but the source is mostly available from the projects they were based on. Some of the code would need to patch it together. I think it was deliberately made to be not fully open source.

I should probably sleep now.

I was reading through Licenses for software while taking a break and I found something in Apache License v2.

Section 3.
..."If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."

Oh the harder they come, the harder they fall.

I think I found something quite disturbing in my work. I think there was a GPL violation and that was raised sometime back but never resolved, it just disappeared. I know that many companies have a long standing record of GPL violations.

The moral of the story is that it's almost pointless to fight these people. They will abuse legal systems that are designed to protect owners but as thieves. Reverse Engineering work has to be done correctly or it will be killed off. Justice has to battle corporations that could influence the USA, Russia and China.

I stated earlier that it was almost pointless and I meant it. People can be made to suffer from doing what's right. If one wants to do the right thing and learn how much more pain can be experienced than they thought possible, they will be the people who make a difference.

Having to install regular Windows is painful. I liked the institutional licensing that just let me reimage 40 computers at once without any registration harrassment. Clean and easy.

@lupyuen Looks rather efficient.

@lupyuen I just upgraded and I love the new watch face. My favorite new feature is the ability to turn Bluetooth off.

I thought that I would say something positive today. I'm thankful for those who have given me encouragement and those who critiqued my work. It takes a true friend to step in and tell someone that they did wrong.

I'm going to get to work on the programming of the BL602 in a few days as hardware and software changes currently have my systems downed. When it's close enough to functional and stable, I will make the source code available online. I've made progress but I have a long way to go.

I think I can.

It keeps tripping me up that I'm not writing firmware for an SoC but writing the wifi part of the firmware on an SoC. Looking back to when I was doing the RE work, it didn't make sense. A driver and an OS do these tasks. If anyone wondered, this isn't BL code, based on their code nor compatible with their code. This is a completely different implementation and I'm learning a lot about how wifi works at the controller level. It's pretty cool.

I was completely lost and overwhelmed a moment ago. So I thought I had a massive workload ahead of me. I kept seeing RTOS and didn't put it together in my head. This is not a typical firmware and driver setup. This is that with parts of the os embedded. This is far more simple than I feared but not as easy as I hoped.