

Western Digital not following the GPL? - antanique

So, I needed to update the firmware of my external WD drive today and I found out that WD graciously provides a firmware updating application for Macs as well (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdc.com&#x2F;wdproducts&#x2F;wdsmartwareupdate&#x2F;firmware.asp?id=wdfMP_Ultra&amp;os=MAC -&gt; &quot;Download now&quot; or http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wdc.com&#x2F;global&#x2F;webtracking&#x2F;index.asp?id=1181&amp;url=http:&#x2F;&#x2F;download.wdc.com&#x2F;fwupdater&#x2F;Mac&#x2F;WDFirmwareUpdater.zip for the direct link).<p>Being the nosy person I am, the first thing I&#x27;ve done was to see inside the application package and guess what:<p>~&#x2F;WDFirmwareUpdater.app&gt; find . -iname &quot;*.h&quot; -type f -print | xargs grep &quot;GNU General Public License&quot;
.&#x2F;Contents&#x2F;Frameworks&#x2F;WDUIKit.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Headers&#x2F;StillCapturer.h:&#x2F;&#x2F;  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
.&#x2F;Contents&#x2F;Frameworks&#x2F;WDUIKit.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Headers&#x2F;StillCapturer.h:&#x2F;&#x2F;  GNU General Public License for more details.
.&#x2F;Contents&#x2F;Frameworks&#x2F;WDUIKit.framework&#x2F;Versions&#x2F;A&#x2F;Headers&#x2F;StillCapturer.h:&#x2F;&#x2F;  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License<p>So far I haven&#x27;t found any source bundle from WD for said framework but this looks like an obvious GPL violation to me - and good job with release control there guys, leaving the .svn directories around was just the finishing touch :)
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Spoom
I found a bunch of pages on their site for GPL compliance, including
[http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=902&sid=...](http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=902&sid=132&lang=en)
.

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antanique
Seems like that stuff doesn't cover the firmware updater. The infringing code
is dated 2006, those files are from 2001 or so.

WDC opensourced all the GPL code inside the firmware for their "smart" (read:
linux-based) product, not their desktop code (see also:
[http://support.wdc.com/download/gpl/](http://support.wdc.com/download/gpl/))

[edit: added info]

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Spoom
Still, it seems they're putting the effort in, and it would seem to be a
better solution to simply email them and ask.

