Database Info

Submitting Patches to the Repo / Forking

Hi all!
I'm an android developer, and I regularly read the official android-dev and android-porting lists, but on all the fan blogs and from lurking here, it seems that all the good development is coming from XDA-dev!
So why don't you guys do some patch submission? Features like auto-rotating browser and the transition animations should really, really be in the main source, but the official Android team have their thumbs up their asses in regards to UI/polished stuff.. (I bet they're too busy working on the lower level cellular stuff and the ARM-generating stuff like in the *flinger libraries).
So you guys should make some patch submissions over at (http://source.android.com/submit-patches)!
That way, the next RC will have all of these lovely features you guys have implemented.
((Or, alternately (but more ambitiously), fork the entire codebase. Strip out the DRM and add a framework for native code execution. Perhaps that's a pipe dream, though..))
Thoughts?

I think forking the Android source would be a very nice touch, if Google doesn't pull it together. We could still add on to stuff from the official code, but add on all the special stuff that Google refuses to (they've said they won't add the ability to change CPU speed, etc).

Oh, absolutely, there would be numerous advantages to having a fork. It should definitely be discussed! I'm afraid that Google may be trying to exert too much control on their platform in ways that we don't always want, so there is nothing legally to stop us from forking and maintain a more badass tree. GitHub could provide the hosting.
Of course, it might be a waste of effort. If you submit the badass patches, then the good features here go out into all the phones in the next versions. Work on the fork, and only the selected users who are able to flash their own phones can use it, unless some Chinese companies start using it or something like that.
Names?
XanDroid? I'd rather like to see Mandroid with in a slick black theme..

Well to me it seems like the only people doing cool things right now with android have rooted devices
So why cant you ***** a little on google lists to make them actually do some work. The Roadmap @ http://source.android.com/roadmap is a joke. Either they give us root or they start working imo. =)

Seanambers said:
Well to me it seems like the only people doing cool things right now with android have rooted devices
So why cant you ***** a little on google lists to make them actually do some work. The Roadmap @ http://source.android.com/roadmap is a joke. Either they give us root or they start working imo. =)
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Do you think that the release of the new unlocked Dev phones will change things?

Yeah it'll most probably shake things up a bit, however what about all those that already have a g1?
I for sure isnt buying a new phone to get root.

But even so, we're still talking about modifications to the OS and the packaged applications, which would be released in the next RC version, so even non-root users would get the features in the next update, along with anyone running Android on something besides a G1.

my .02
Id say submit some of the things found here and see what goog does with it, if they openly add these things that need root at this point and let xda dev participate in the OS with such submitions...then cool thats how open source works best, when anybody can add to the project, a phone OS utopia
If they ignore it then, a fork is the way to go but give google a chance to do the right thing first before, just leaving them in the xdadevs dust with a custom distro...

bhang said:
Id say submit some of the things found here and see what goog does with it, if they openly add these things that need root at this point and let xda dev participate in the OS with such submitions...then cool thats how open source works best, when anybody can add to the project, a phone OS utopia
If they ignore it then, a fork is the way to go but give google a chance to do the right thing first before, just leaving them in the xdadevs dust with a custom distro...
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Google has refused to add multiple features. They feel that they aren't necessary, or that your average consumer wouldn't want it (main thing I can think of atm is CPU speed).
If they don't add the features we request, simply because *they* don't like them, then a fork would get us exactly what we want/need. After we fork it, and the number of users using stock Android plummet, maybe they will listen .

I see a problem with forking... who says what is allowed and not allowed? That is the main problem. Now if you wanted to just add an app that would be one thing but there is not going to be an easy way to do this.

Gary13579 said:
Google has refused to add multiple features. They feel that they aren't necessary, or that your average consumer wouldn't want it (main thing I can think of atm is CPU speed).
If they don't add the features we request, simply because *they* don't like them, then a fork would get us exactly what we want/need. After we fork it, and the number of users using stock Android plummet, maybe they will listen .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Given the number of G1s with modified fw installed compared to the total number of sold units, I somehow doubt the number of users is going to plummet.
IMHO it would be a needless fork unless some new or considerably modified features were planned. Better to just patch the functionality into the official builds, if at all possible.

I'm not convinced by that logic. There would be an important difference between a fork and patched versions of the firmware, as a fork would have a totally different design philosophy. Whereas Android is focused on speed (or whatever the hell they're concentrating on..but to be honest, I think they're dicking about over there), Mandroid could have more focus on polished features and low-level access. ((And! No DRM, and I'd like to see some more security features..ZRTP?))
Either way, I think it's really important for the success of the open future of phones that the open source community take and give back. There's no need for the back-and-forth like with, say, PSP-cracking as we have the source code and we are allowed to do whatever we like with it. If we just keep patching what they give us and keeping the modifications closed, then we aren't really in control.
As for project management, I'm absolutely sure there are people who are capable of maintaining an active open-source project such as this, as long as there is a well-thought out design philosophy. I'd love to be involved, if enough people are willing to give it a shot. But, first, it'd be easier just to submit patches.

Miserlou! said:
PSP-cracking
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PSP cracking is insanely different. If you were in that scene, does my name look familiar ? Was net admin at toc2rta/malloc, admin of psp-hacks.com, worked with a lot of people on a lot of stuff that I barely remember as it was years ago .
But for the PSP, we were working with a system we knew nothing about. So yes, Android would be a lot simpler to work with. But if Google doesn't listen to us, it's not like it would really matter.

neoobs said:
I see a problem with forking... who says what is allowed and not allowed? That is the main problem. Now if you wanted to just add an app that would be one thing but there is not going to be an easy way to do this.
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Click to collapse
Android is licensed by both the Apache Software License (do whatever you want with it) and the General Public License (do whatever you want with it as long as you make the source code available for others). We are certainly allowed to do this, but the problem lies with the G1 owners running the official RC30. They wont have the rights required to flash the image which leaves them out of the party.

2 words
The community(did I spell that right?)
Bhang

Datruesurfer said:
Android is licensed by both the Apache Software License (do whatever you want with it) and the General Public License (do whatever you want with it as long as you make the source code available for others). We are certainly allowed to do this, but the problem lies with the G1 owners running the official RC30. They wont have the rights required to flash the image which leaves them out of the party.
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I meant who is going to the be decision maker of what features will be added... The Community as a whole? What about some that want it but only 25% of the community wants it?

neoobs said:
I meant who is going to the be decision maker of what features will be added... The Community as a whole? What about some that want it but only 25% of the community wants it?
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That's what project leads are for. And hypothetically when enough people are dissatisfied with the xda-dev fork they will go and create their own fork. Except I don't think there is any real argument yet to go and create an xda-dev fork in the first place. Forking an operating system meaningfully is not a weekend project for a single person.

I have said it before, let's give them a bit more of a chance, a fork isn't something a guy can do in a weekend.
So let's see what happens in RC3X, the next release will give folks a bbetter idea of where their heads are at. If enough of the community is unhappy there will be a fork
Bhang

is bootloader finally "cracked"?

http://www.wix.com/palmercurling/project-bootloader-freedom
seems that kexec methods works...and probably today or tomorrow source code will be released....

if that's true, then it'll be good news
that will make Dexter porting of 2.2 even easier

Hm... Maybe if this work.. Dexer can try with 2.3

grigorbg said:
Hm... Maybe if this work.. Dexer can try with 2.3
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Dexter already explain why 2.3 is not going to work

He didn't say it's not gonna work, he say it MIGHT not work but he'll test it. That's what he said.

Vistaus said:
He didn't say it's not gonna work, he say it MIGHT not work but he'll test it. That's what he said.
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Well, he said that 2.3 may need newer kernel, not an 2.6.29 that works on xt720, cause of bootloader...
So, i hope that will helps!

That's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion. He said MAY need a newer kernel, but it's not clear yet 'cause he doesn't have the XT720 yet nor 2.3, so maybe it'll work.
And btw, I dunno if you guys actually read the first post in this thread but if the bootloader is cracked in some way, then it doesn't matter anymore 'cause we can flash any custom kernel then.

Sure, it's only was message about why Dexter says it's not going to work.
People from droid-developers.org also already tried much attemps... with kexec also...
For now.. no success =(

Motorola just marked the request to unlock the Droid X bootloader as "Implemented" here!!!:
http://getsatisfaction.com/motorola/topics/please_unlock_the_droid_x_bootloader
This may be related to:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/01/1...bootloaders-looks-to-partner-with-developers/
which links to a Facebook response by Motorola that reads:
Motorola - We apologize for the feedback we provided regarding our bootloader policy. The response does not reflect the views of Motorola.
We are working closely with our partners to offer a bootloader solution that will enable developers to use our devices as a development platform while still protecting our users’ interests. More detailed information will follow as we get closer to availability.
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Click to collapse
I'm incredulous. I really don't want to get my hopes up. We need a "support group" and seven step program.
Edit: More coverage of the incident
http://androinica.com/2011/01/19/motorola-unsure-of-its-own-bootloader-policy/
http://nexus404.com/Blog/2011/01/20...m-users-to-go-away-then-begs-for-forgiveness/

why is the bootloader so difficult to crack?
Why is the bootloader so difficult to crack?

c_urbanek said:
Why is the bootloader so difficult to crack?
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Click to collapse
The short answer is that the security in the bootloader is based on very high quality mathematics.
Basically it's what's called a NP-complete problem (I think, I'm an armchair cryptographer only). Think of this this way, we have some sort of algorithm (equations are a kind of algorithm):
45 * x + 32 = 76
Now, there are two ways to find values of x that satisfy this equation. The way we are taught in school is to use the rules of arithmetic to convert the algorithm into a simpler algorithm that yields an expression we can evaluate directly. That's pretty fast.
Now assume you didn't learn how to do that and that nobody in the world knows how to do it. The other way to solve it is to try plugging in values of x on the left-hand side until you find a value that when evaluated gives 76. That way could take a very long time. In fact, you can calculate how long you expect it will take based on how long it takes to test a single value and the expected number of values you'll have to test. (On computers, numbers can be very large, but they can't be infinite)
Fundamentally, this gets to a very important unanswered question in computer science and mathematics called "P ?= NP" which essentially asks: can every possible algorithm be simplified somehow to be solved faster than plugging numbers (over simplified a bit) or are there some algorithms that can only be solved by trying different values until one works. Digitial cryptography is based on finding algorithms that can't be solved easily with current knowledge (the research question is can you find an algorithm and prove that it can never be simplified--again oversimplified a bit).
The bootloader uses one of these algorithms (in the sense that publicly nobody knows anybody that can simplify it--insert NSA conspiracy theories). I think I read somewhere that based on the keysize and using the best algorithms available to search the keyspace, the expected amount of time required to crack the key using all of the available computing power in the world is something like 15-30 years. There was the distributed cracking effort, but they were using very inefficient algorithms that supposedly would take at least over 1000 years (some people said it would take longer than the life of the universe). Some have said that hardware that should be available in five years should be able to break it in five years or something like that. I'm probably remembering the details wrong, but in any case it's not good news.
So, that leaves us with essentially five ways to crack the bootloader:
(1) Look for the key with the expectation to never find in the lifetime of the device,
(2) Find a bug in the implementation of the the bootloader itself (could be either a hardware or software bug),
(3) physically modify the phone to disable the check,
(4) find an efficient attack on the algorithm (i.e. prove this particular encryption isn't one of the mythical unsolvable ones),
(5) convince Motorola to just give it to us.

I picked this XT720 phone over iphone as it will be better with open source community will do new tech y things I will learn and enjoy best we can ever have as in phone. Motorola did tried to diminish the impact for product with the poor upgrade support. I was thinking of selling ( as most of us did thought before Dexter the man behind the rescue operation and best of this community ) my phone. Now i must say it has much better response, satisfaction and relief. This new news has now pumped up everything that we are going to be best in this competition. I think only we have to look for is the alternative for front camera ( something like usb camera attachment or something like that.. may be silly of me I am dreaming ) and this will be best product in the line. Love you people for making my wrong decision worth. Cheers to my XT720 community.
Thanks to all who joined hand for better:

@Mio: Indeed. Btw, number 3 or 4 is already solved by booting a ROM via 2nd init. That is what ROM-bakers do on the Milestone 2 and the Defy. We could do that too.

We need a top noch developer to crack this bootloader that's it.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App

Is it even worth it?

When I bought my first Infuse back in July i was pretty excited to learn how to use it and get into developing for Android. It was my first Android phone so I didn't know enough to know that I was buying Samsung's red headed step child. Since then I've been working on learning the various ins and outs of the phone. I've read all the posts in the Infuse forums, and looked through the githubs of the various amazing dev's who have worked so hard to give us the awesome roms we have. I feel pretty comfortable with the phone, and I'm still excited to take things to the next level.
Yet I can't help but feel discouraged. I have very few doubts about my ability to get ICS working on the Infuse, but I'm getting pretty tired of seeing nothing but naysaying from the last wave of experienced dev's. Obviously there are going to be hurdles, but how about offering encouragement to those of us who haven't given up yet? Isn't XDA about making the impossible happen? I have other phones I could focus on. I bought a Nexus 4G so I could learn how ICS AOSP is supposed to work and look before I bothered trying to blindly get it running on the Infuse. It is a ton of fun developing for that phone and I've already been able to do some pretty nifty things. I bought an sgs2 so that I could have a phone that had current dev work being done on it. I bought a rezound so that I could have a good solid daily driver (man I love that phone). In spite of all that, it is the Infuse that I want to do dev work for because it was my first love, and because it will be a fun challenge.
I just don't know if it is worth the effort any more. Are there enough positive people still left here that I would want to care about? I'm going to work on the phone regardless, but as it stands now, I don't see anything to gain from continuing to grow to be a part of this community.
I keep reading that things can't be done because we don't have the right drivers, or the right sources, or bad sources or etc etc. Is it true that it can't be done at all? Or is it true that it can't be done because no one wants to (or can) put in the amount of time that it will take to get things working?

Meh, you cant get something down with out the right equipment, the equipment being the codes, drivers, and sources. it could be possibly done, but you got to understand that the people who dev for this phone, got lives too. they cant just be stuck to a computer trying to get something to work.

Put it like this... we have an amazing hardware... we have software ready to be used... but we don't have the interfacing unit with us... and this is what is holding back the devs

If it is just a matter of time then great. Obviously it takes time to write the right drivers/driver wrappers etc etc. That just isn't the tone of most of the posts. "It can't be done" tends to be what it is said.

jefffeely said:
If it is just a matter of time then great. Obviously it takes time to write the right drivers/driver wrappers etc etc. That just isn't the tone of most of the posts. "It can't be done" tends to be what it is said.
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Click to collapse
Drivers can't be written without documentation.
That's the problem - there are a lot of proprietary binary blobs required to support various hardware, for which there is no documentation. Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort.
See Bluetooth on CM7 as an example.

Entropy512 said:
Drivers can't be written without documentation.
That's the problem - there are a lot of proprietary binary blobs required to support various hardware, for which there is no documentation. Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort.
See Bluetooth on CM7 as an example.
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I agree with this. But given that we already have CM7, shouldn't we be able to look at that code and use it to translate to the changes in ICS? I'm not being able to describe very well what I'm thinking. Something like using the CM7 code as a HAL?

its a crapshoot maybe it will work out like cm7. maybe it wont. I wish you luck. Im simply not a programmer. if I was I'd offer help. it depends a lot on what can and can't be used or adapted from gingerbread.

Entropy512 said:
... Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort....
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Click to collapse
So you're saying there's a chance. --Lloyd Christmas.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App

[Q] How do i make a rom

i am sick of the mt4gs olny having a handful of rom
i really want to contribute to this deving community and i dont know anything about the codes or stuff but if i know ill probably like deving so can anybody tell me where to start deving blue6x ( sorry if i misspeled that i meant no disrespect ) but do you have any tips for me i really want to dev.

My suggestion is to start with a port. Look for the htc kitchen here on xda. Thats how I started. Did a port of the Salsa for the myTouch 3G Slide. I got some great help from others in the 3G Slide dev section (especially Nbetcher he Rocks).
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium

Ohgami_Ichiro said:
My suggestion is to start with a port. Look for the htc kitchen here on xda. Thats how I started. Did a port of the Salsa for the myTouch 3G Slide. I got some great help from others in the 3G Slide dev section (especially Nbetcher he Rocks).
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seen this post in my latest feed, was wondering if the htc kitchen works for the thunderbolt as well. A lot of the devs for thunderbolt jumped ship when the newer phones came out.

I am pretty sure it is supported. Before he stopped developing it he was adding HTC phones regularly and added a few non htc ones. It's a great program and I learned a lot about linux from using it. It is a powerful and simple program.
Edit: looks like he did a small update to be compatable with ics.
Here's the thread.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=633246
Sent from my myTouch_4G_Slide using xda premium

Not too long ago someone asked me the same question. It was an in-person thing, not over the net, and it is really a hard question to answer. Though yours poses a slight bit more information as regards to the how. Try this analogy:
Q - What's it take to make a new car?
In that respect, why don't you like the car you have?
- Not enough horsepower? Color bothering you?
- Maybe the interior is a little beat up. Could you use some more room in the trunk maybe?
Navigation system would be cool too.
...
Just like deciding if you don't like your car, what don't you like about your ROM now?
- Are you looking for an overclock kernel? Do you want to mess with themes maybe?
- Wanna edit Rosie or change something in Sense? Get rid of some apps to make room for...what?
-In my case I took on GPS, why I mentioned that.
----
You should have some kind of idea what you want out of a ROM. Even if you're just tinkering with it to see what happens, sooner or later you will want to change specific things.
Get used to managing the flow of information. That's probably the best advice I could give anyone. Time is your competition, and you are competing against yourself.
To me, it seems, you have a finite amount of time to invest in the endeavor - nowhere is it more apparent to me then right now when I have a lot of other things making demands on my time. Depending on how much time you have, decides what you can do.
Time management is your most valuable skill at your disposal. Forget anything about languages, coding, graphics or any of that stuff. You won't get to any of it if you waste all the dev time you have trying to figure out or attempt to do everything at once.
This being the root of all you build on, the more efficiently you manage your time and projects, the more you can accomplish per time invested, maximizing the range of projects you can tackle.
Too, as you learn more skills it increases the range of what you can try to do. But the foundation of that is taking the time to search for information on how to do things. Knowing even rudimentary search techniques becomes a huge asset when trying to find guides, tutorials, manuals and documentation.
If you want to work on the device, then you should at a minimum have read the user manual cover to cover more then once, reviewed the HTC and T-Mobile web pages for it and read through them.
Don't forget to stop by Qualcomm's web page and read up on the processor.
Some Device / Documentation Links:
- HTC
- HTC doubleshot Product Page
- HTC doubleshot User Manual
- HTC Dev
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- T-Mobile
- T-Mobile doubleshot Marketing Page
- T-Mobile product pages for the doubleshot: Black or Khaki colors.
- T-Mobile doubleshot Specifications Page where you can download the user manual.
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- Qualcomm
- Qualcomm Snapdragon Product Page
- Qualcomm doubleshot Product Page
- Snapdragon S3 Processors Overview
- Snapdragon MSM8x60 APQ8060 Product Brief
- Snapdragon Fact Sheet
----
- PDAdb entry for the doubleshot
- PDAdb entry for Snapdragon Processors
----
- Revolutionary: S-OFF & Recovery Tool
- doubleshot Fastboot Drivers
- HTC Sync
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Right behind Time Management, information is your next greatest asset. The reason you always strive to maximize your efficiency in gathering and learning from information is to build your skillset and be able to tackle more complex operations.
Resource management is one of the ways you save yourself a lot of time. Naming conventions and structures are important to designate what file belongs where. Don't just make generic names for things, give everything you are doing a label.
Versioning is extremely important. You need to keep track of what files belong to what versions. It is so easy to get things mixed up, lost or what have you.
Optical media will save you a whole lot of time. If you save something to a disk, finalized...none of that multi-session, then you have a static copy of something according to how you made it. It hasn't been changed, altered or anything - you always have a clean source.
That doesn't mean don't keep things on dynamic media, portable hard drives, flash drives, partitions of your internal hard drive structure...these are all good locations for backups and duplicates. The optical media you know is pure.
Depending on what kind of prior computer skills and habits you have before you start will set your base level of efficiency. As we've seen efficiency equates directly into all forward progress, this whole subsection applies to you. The message?
Take some time to learn how to learn before you start.
Before you even start to work, concentrate on setting up your work environment. Think about how you will name stuff, and how you will keep track of it.
Check out this portable program for the computer
That program will let you keep track of things by setting up notes in a directory tree, so this would be a good thing to use to test out file structure, how you expect folders to develop as you envision the project and so on.
This is a tedious task at first, because you don't know how the project will develop, but just making the attempt every time makes it a part of your process. As you take on bigger and bigger projects, it makes you stop and give yourself an overview before you start.
Get a dry erase board. You'll thank me later. I have a 4x8 sheet of plywood next to my desk with sticky-mount dry-erase on it and a handful of markers on my desk. I also have a small 9" x 11" one I drilled 3 holes in to fit in a 3 ring binder.
The binder has folders with printouts and handwritten notes on my projects. Whenever possible I try to write my code outside, usually sitting in or under a tree. No computers, no anything but peace, quiet a notebook an a pen. A memory exercise to force me to recall it from my mind and not google.
I learned that writing web pages a long time ago. Just go sit somewhere quiet and write out your HTML code in a notebook. This is probably where everyone should start if they want to learn code. It's probably the simplest, most forgiving language to familiarize yourself with the higher programming languages. Try to learn a few after learning HTML first.
If you want to get into graphics, while you're learning HTML is a great time to do so. You can start messing with images and learning how to use graphics programs at the most basic of levels to start small. There are a lot of options in things like photoshop and gimp, so knowing what they do doesn't all come at once.
...and then we're back to time management again. By piggybacking the skills, we are learning the very basic structure of what some of the code we'll come across later looks like while simultaneously introducing ourselves slowly to complicated graphics software.
From here, if you get into graphics, or if you skipped the HTML part because coding doesn't interest you - learn about icons.
What else do you know about computers? The first real problem I tackled once we got root was to dive into GPS issues. I needed the GPS to replace the standalone gps unit I used to have, and out of the box it was just not sufficient.
In the beginning don't be in a hurry. Rushing gets you nowhere but tired. Take your time and learn good habits, however much longer you think it's taking in the beginning.
Development at it's core is doing something new or more efficiently, really. To do either you have to know what is, so you'll be spending a lot of time learning what the android SDK is and how to use it. Definitely read as much literature as you can from Google's site. Again, though, back to information being your friend.
But above all, enjoy yourself. It's fun, exciting learning new things, and there's no reason why anything can't be done that's a reasonable expectation of performance - it's just a matter of making it happen. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
You left a really open ended question, and I sense the excitement behind it - ( believe me I know ) - figured some theory would be helpful in guiding that.
Edit:
This thread: Windows XP - Fresh Dev Computer setup is one i'm putting together to show one way to set up a windows environment. I have some links to tools in there, and i'll be adding more as soon as I get the time to straighten it out. It's a WIP right now, but I just have to find the time to type it out.
It might be helpful in getting started, and i'm sure you could find some linux guides floating around XDA if that's your preference

Blue Kicks Ass.
Sent from my RubiX ICS v5.0 using xda premium

annoying samsung...

I'm trying to get Samsung to release the source for their ar6000.ko ethernet kernel module as well as the source they used for wpa_supplicant (which contains extensions to wpa_supplicant.) To that end, I've sent them a few messages making those requests. Here was their reply (edited)
1. about 'ar6000.ko'
: source code of atheros chip set is not GPL.
We get BSD/GPL dual license from Atheros company.
We choose BSD license, so we do not have any obligation to publish source codeof it.
2. wpa_supplicant
Wpa_supplicant is also BSD/GPL dual license. (and we also choose BSD license)
________________________________________________________________
WPA Supplicant
==============
Copyright (c) 2003-2008, Jouni Malinen and contributors
All Rights Reserved.
This program is dual-licensed under both the GPL version 2 and BSD
license. Either license may be used at your option.
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Click to collapse
Sadly, they seem to have failed to meet the conditions of the BSD licensing as well. I've sent them another message stating this:
Concerning the atheros AR6000 driver and the wpa_supplicant binary. In denying the making available source for both the ar6000 module and the wpa_supplicant binary, you state that you get both of these with dual GPL/BSD licensing and choose the BSD license. That is fine, however you failed to meet the terms of the BSD license. In particular, for both items, the BSD license states: " Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution." You have failed to state your licensing terms and this disclaimer in reference to the above stated items in either the printed documentation or the legal licensing screen embedded within the settings app on the device. As a matter of fact, you've failed to provide any licensing notice for GPL or BSD licensing for either item.
Regardless, I'm asking for these items in order to attempt to FIX BUGS that have been left in the device. It's been well documented in the forums for users of these devices that the wifi chipset drivers are causing crashes, freezes, "sleep of death" situations, etc. Samsung's support has been EXTREMELY unresponsive in attempting to resolve these issue, and I'd be willing to bet that reports of these issue aren't even getting through to your development teams.
Therefore, I once again ask that you release the source for the ar6000 module and wpa_supplicant binary that you have NOT followed the licensing terms of (regardless of which license you've chosen.) Oh, and there's no licensing string embedded in the ar6000.ko module either. modinfo ar6000.ko reveals nothing (for the ar6000.ko module on the GT-P6210 with KL1 firmware.)
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Honestly, I don't expect for Samsung to be responsive and/or helpful. I think the best that anyone can expect is that they release an updated firmware that includes the proper licensing information.
Gary

Check and mate Sir. I despise these OEMs. You GO gary. Whatever happened to opensource? What are they so afraid of?
Anything we can do to help, let us know. Even if it means just spamming their inbox.

It's not like I buy the tablet because it has such an epic driver....
I buy it for the hardware...
When your entire OS is practically open source... not open sourcing the drivers for the wireless chip seems like shooting yourself in the foot just because you can.

Thanks garyd9 for fighting the good fight.

When companies do stuff like this for critical things, it _really_ makes me want to spend my money elsewhere.
In regards to the SOD issue, I've noticed that quite a few honeycomb tablets have this issue or something similar to it. I've only personally seen it with Samsung branded ones (10.1 and 7.0+), but have heard similar issues with asus and and acer.
Perhaps its a honeycomb issue?
Gary

give em hell!

If you'd like to help, please click the link near the top of the OP to submit the article to the XDA portal. Perhaps if this issue is shown on the front page, and enough people notice, Samsung could be convinced to "choose" GPL over BSD.
Thank you
Gary

Did you get any useful /proc/last_kmsg dumps of SoDs? Enabling wifi may only be making a difference because of the wakeups.
That said - I am completely shocked that Broadcom's drivers are open source and the ar6000 driver isn't. I've lost a lot of respect for Atheros AND for Samsung over this. I can understand if it's BSD - but seriously, what trade secrets could Samsung have in a freaking Atheros driver, and for something like this, what possible business reason could they have for witholding source for that ONE module? It's freaking stupid.
I was hoping that they'd start becoming more developer-friendly as a result of hiring Cyanogen, but they're being asshats at this point. They donated a device to Codeworkx (or someone else on Teamhacksung) to get CM7 ported, but have not given him a shred of assistance with the porting effort. Basically, trying to get "Supported by CyanogenMod" credits without ANY significant effort.
As much as I hate Sony - SE seems to be doing the best of any manufacturer in terms of supporting people doing platform-level development.
Edits:
You know, this is proving to be a clear and recurring pattern. I have never seen XDA get anything useful out of SamsungJohn for example, all he does is come over, tease us with something, and never follow up.
Over in the Captivate forums - he came in and posted that source code was out, then left without any followup - by the time he made this announcement, people had already found the source and were working with it - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=997098
He then came and teased us with the Samsung Developer Program - guess what, it provides NOTHING for developers doing platform work - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1392847 - John also didn't come and respond to any of the feedback
Prior to that there was the Samsung Developers Conference tease - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1291758 - nothing useful came out of this for anyone doing platform work. In fact, John just dropped off the face of the earth, I'm assuming that not a single person from XDA actually was brought by Samsung to the event, otherwise there would've been a followup/debrief post. Anyway, the "big announcement" was just the Galaxy Nexus release announcement. Big deal - that's a dev phone because Google forces it to be one, it's more of a Google product than a Samsung one.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=954896 (and many similar posts) - He just crossposted to a ton of forums saying something awesome was coming. Something awesome never came. The linked thread from many of his posts doesn't even exist. Actually, most of his 67 posts are just crossposting this tease - NOTHING ever came out of it.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/08/samsung-shows-affection-to-cyanogenmod-gives-its-devs-a-free-ga/ - As a PR stunt, Samsung threw a Galaxy S II over the wall to one of the CM developers. Without a doubt, Dan Hillenbrand (codeworkx) and Atin Malvaya (atinm) have not received any support from Samsung since Sammy threw a device over to them. The GSII is likely to be codeworkx's last Samsung device, he has become so frustrated with Samsung (Check his posts in the CM9 thread for I9100). Compare this to Sony Ericsson's effort here - http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/wp/2011/09/28/sony-ericsson-supports-independent-developers/ - They have given FreeXperia MASSIVE amounts of support, and it shows - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/sony-ericsson-xperia-support
imnuts07 asked for some help regarding Droid Charge kernel source issues - https://twitter.com/#!/SamsungJohn/status/152835654303236097 - All he responded with was "how can we help" - no further response, imnuts07 didn't get anywhere until jt1134 gave him some pointers. (It turned out to be more proprietary module vermagic bull****...)
After all this, it's clear that with regards to platform developers, Samsung's intent is to do the bare minimum to meet their legal obligations with the GPL and no more. Even source code which they COULD release and have no valid reason for withholding is withheld if they are able to (such as the ar6000 module source code). I thought that the Galaxy S II was a step forward towards devices with 100% open source kernels, however it is clear that the GSII was just a fluke. I'm getting sick and tired of dealing with module vermagic headaches. I've spent at this point a few hundred hours of my spare time working on improvements to various products of theirs(maintaining kernels for three different products - Samsung Infuse, AT&T Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Player 5.0), and their consistent message back has been "go away, screw you, stop bothering us".

There may be a small bit of hope - I've been contacted by someone at samsung (perhaps due to your rant combined with my constant pestering on their open source website.) It isn't much, but the first line of collaborating is communication. They seem more interested in fixing the bugs than sharing code, but I'll take what I can get.
Oh, and the last_ksmg memory was corrupted when the one person who had adb, my kernel and root installed was able to check it. (As you know, the file won't be generated if header area for the ram console can't be found or is in bad shape.)
We'll see what happens, but I'm not going to hold my breath with the lunar new year coming up.
Take care
Gary

so how many people do we need to sue??

chrisrotolo said:
so how many people do we need to sue??
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No lawsuits required. Although... that might explain the poor customer support from Samsung. Perhaps they've been afraid that Apple will sue them for patent infringement if they help a customer?
Not that I've ever had any GOOD support from Apple... mostly just clueless kids taking guesses. Even their so-called "geniuses" are mostly clueless.
In typing that, I realized that I'm probably one of the hardest people in the world to provide technical support to. When I have a question, it's only after I've exhausted the combined knowledge of myself and whatever google can provide... meaning the only good response from phone support would be "Would you like to cross-ship an exchange or wait for the repair?"

can we spook them with a (legal)letter they are in violation of the GPL/BSD agreement, and If it isnt provided in X amount of time, we will be forced to escalate?
I like to annoy people to (;

Speaking from personal experience ,when dealing (even on corporate high level) with Samsung there is nothing to gain but some weight due to stress.
They do care( up to a degree) about some customer relations and I've seen very nice, honest and helpful people there. But this is where it all ends.
The farther you go the worse it gets. Somehow they got this Apple attitude of profit and secrecy all over their structure. Apple calls themselves "innovators" to reason the secrecy, but Sammy are nowhere near. If I was to say they do act like copycat killers I risk getting called names- though they "adapt" almost everything, from design to business models. The Korean HQ has drawn quite strict regulations for the rest of the world.
We should remember that Samsung is a HUGE corporation. Android devices D&R is a tiny faction, ruled like in Middle Ages. They have the road map and they ever raise the stake every time. From my point of view, I sincerely understand those people for not jumping out with the source code. If you get paid 100k+, you don't help anyone but yourself. The decisions are not theirs. The people taking decisions don't give a rat's a55 about GNU or Linux, Minux or whatever. On top of that, there are some people that MIGHT have some influence in changing this policy ( the brown bearded, we call them) but those are the pride ridden SOBs.
You can read this from their mobile device history. They had to go into that, given the fact they build everything, from ships to home furniture. They got a share of the market because they were big and had some bright minds there. I know for a fact that, at the beginning, working @ cell phone dept was like sentenced to prison, only the undesirable but indispensable were sent there. Huh, those people left, some for Apple and some for others ( LG,Sony and Hyundai). Panasonic and Toshiba flops are some examples of how, in a degree, cultural burdens lead to a fail. HTC, a mobile phone company, depends on how much stir dev's can produce. On the other hand, Samsung can get a write-off for their mobile dept. without a blink. Bada is a perfect example. It was close to write off so they decided to make it open- see HP. They are too big to follow rules and beside being big, they hold the power few have- the power TO BEND rules, that is.
Getting any serious, development like help from Samsung is close to what ''Acts of God" are described in car insurance.

htc9420 said:
HTC, a mobile phone company, depends on how much stir dev's can produce.
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You are, obviously, an HTC fan or employee. Well, I have a samsung tablet, so I'm developing on a samsung tablet. At least the device was unlocked when I bought it and I didn't have to petition on facebook/twitter/etc just to be able to root it.
Unless you have something to contribute to solving a problem, please go elsewhere.

garyd9 said:
You are, obviously, an HTC fan or employee. Well, I have a samsung tablet, so I'm developing on a samsung tablet. At least the device was unlocked when I bought it and I didn't have to petition on facebook/twitter/etc just to be able to root it.
Unless you have something to contribute to solving a problem, please go elsewhere.
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I wouldn't be so quick to judge him...

I just got the impression that the point of the post was to promote HTC while bashing everyone else.
Perhaps I spoke (typed) too soon. If so, I apologize.

No, the HTC thing was just one line, and what I perceived as some general comments on why some manufacturers (Panasonic, Toshiba) seem to have kind of flopped in the market.
There was definitive Samsung-bashing - but he's just joining with us in frustration.
Check PMs gary.

garyd9 said:
I'm trying to get Samsung to release the source for their ar6000.ko ethernet kernel module as well as the source they used for wpa_supplicant (which contains extensions to wpa_supplicant.) To that end, I've sent them a few messages making those requests. Here was their reply (edited)
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Hey Gary,
I'm the developer for a CyanogenMod port for the Samsung phone (GT-I5500). Samsung have released their source for an older version of the AR6kSDK, which I have put on github here: https://github.com/psyke83/AR6kSDK.3.0. This source is quite old, and doesn't support combo scanning, but it's newer than the ath6kl source release contained in the 2.6.35 kernel.
Last night I scoured the internet trying to find some newer source, and came across a release by Sony for one of their e-book reader products. I have uploaded the source onto github which you can check here: https://github.com/psyke83/AR6kSDK.3.1
The above git's description links to the location of the original source tarball on Sony's server, but if you prefer, just clone the git and checkout the first commit, as it's the unmodified source.
I have made some changes already to get the module to initialize properly, but at present it's not even scanning properly. Perhaps it will work better for you without modifications, especially if your device is not AR6003_REV2 (which is the revision on my phone).

chrisrotolo said:
can we spook them with a (legal)letter they are in violation of the GPL/BSD agreement, and If it isnt provided in X amount of time, we will be forced to escalate?
I like to annoy people to (;
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my friend mat has done this for me as he knows his stuff. it was a very powerful letter i must say haha. just waiting for a response

gary, thanks for all your efforts man! this is my first samsung android device, have they always been this bad in witholding source?