Difference between revisions of "Open Source Obligations"

Revision as of 13:48, 23 February 2013

Your meteobridge device consists of three components from different sources and with different license conditions.

Meteobridge Hardware

There is no dedicated meteobridge hardware, but we found a way to convert cheap and widely available router hardware into a meteobridge platform. At the moment two pocket routers from TP-LINK and one from ASUS can be converted into a meteobridge platform. Please keep in mind that you will void your manufacturer warranty when installing alien firmware. Installing meteobridge firmware into the router is nothing illegal, you are free to use a device you own in a way you like, but you are on your own when doing so.

OpenWrt

The meteobridge firmware you can download as explained in "Getting Started" section consists of two parts. The main part is a OpenWrt distribution. OpenWrt is an Open Source router software, which can be installed on many routers from different manufacturers. The routers from TP-LINK are well supported by OpenWrt as TP-LINK does comply in a good way to Open Source/GPL obligations, that enforce to make source code and toolchain available when you ship a product based on GPLed code, which is true for Linux in general. As the OpenWrt part of the meteobridge firmware is 99% stock OpenWrt, we do not make the complete OpenWrt sources available but provide a tar archive which the kernel config for TL-WR703N and TL-MR3020 and the additional files which are included into OpenWrt via an overlay file system. You find this archive hre: File:Meteobridge-addons.tgz. Used OpenWrt distribution including toolchain and Linux sources can be downloaded as explained below (will setup initial config for TL-MR3020).

cd ~
svn checkout svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk/ mr3020

cd ~/mr3020
cat > ~/mr3020/feeds.conf <<EOF
src-svn packages svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/packages
src-svn luci http://svn.luci.subsignal.org/luci/trunk/contrib/package
EOF

./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a

mkdir ~/.openwrt
cat > ~/.openwrt/defconfig <<EOF
CONFIG_TARGET_ar71xx=y
CONFIG_TARGET_ar71xx_generic=y
CONFIG_TARGET_ar71xx_generic_TLMR3020=y
# CONFIG_TARGET_ROOTFS_JFFS2 is not set
CONFIG_PACKAGE_block-mount=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_luci-proto-3g=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-fs-ext4=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-usb-serial=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-usb-serial-option=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_kmod-usb-storage=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_usb-modeswitch=y
CONFIG_PACKAGE_usb-modeswitch-data=y
EOF

# select the ar71xx target before running defconfig
echo CONFIG_TARGET_ar71xx=y > .config

# run defconfig if you are fine with the settings from above.
# builds an image for the TP-Link TL-MR3020 including
# support for LuCI web UI, 3G USB dongels and extroot. 
make defconfig

# or run menuconfig if you like to make additional changes
make menuconfig

# build OpenWrt with
make

# or if you have an multi-core CPU system you can also enable
# parallel building with
make -jN # N is the number of cores

Meteobridge firmware does not lock you out from full OpenWrt access, you can login via ssh as user "root" with password "meteobridge" and can reach the OpenWrt web interface at "http://<ip-of-meteobridge>/cgi-bin/luci".

Meteobridge Application SW

Having OpenWrt installed on your device converts it to a fine router. So all features around network (LAN and WLAN) are there and Meteobridge application SW stack does not need to care about that anymore. On top of OpenWrt Meteobridge provides programs to connect to weather stations, to read data from it and to transfer it to selected weather networks. This application software resides in folders "/root", "/home/meteohub" and "/home/meteobridge". Executables in these folders are not Open Source but copyrighted by and intellectual property of smartbedded UG. As these applications are only linking to LGPLed Linux libraries, there is no GPL viral effect and Open Source license obligations are not violated. Connection with GPLed components is purely done by file-based communication (files, pipes, sockets) which also does not violate GPL terms. As you see, we are respecting Open Source rules and we are taking care of not breaking Open Source licenses. If you have doubts, please contact "license(at)smartbedded.com" so that we can settle a potential issue.

In order to support Open Source development smartbedded UG is a donator for the OpenWrt project at "Software in the Public Interest, Inc" (Donation Order Number: 1212220808558810211).