just thought a new thread would be better... but here is the first part of my e-mail with freescale:

i have removed e-mails to prevent spam bots from getting them
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Hi

My english is limited, but i will try to explain what I want with my request.

Me and a group of Empeg owners, want to continue development on the software that is in the player.

And since no company has used the rights - for the source behind the software - for the last 7 years (i might be off by 1 or 2 years), we where wondering if it was possible to obtain the rights?

I hope that freescale are open to discuss this matter.. It would help the community a lot, since we would now be able to fix bugs and add new features.

There is no plan to make money of this work and we have talked about and GPL license...

Maybe, in the feature we would also like to make a limted production of an upgraded version of the player, but there is absolute no plan for this as i write


Best Regards

Bo Herrmannsen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Taylor Jack-R61933"
To: "Bo Herrmannsen"
Cc: "Weisman Dale-R62632"
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 8:34 AM
Subject: RE: Empeg, Riocar


Bo

We are looking into it

Can you advise as to the context of your request?

Jack Taylor

-----Original Message-----
From: Bo Herrmannsen
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 10:35 AM
To: Taylor Jack-R61933
Subject: Empeg, Riocar

Hi

It has come to my knowledge that freescale should be the owner of the
rights to the software that is used on the Empeg/Riocar player

I did some tracking and this is what i found out:

Rio bought Empeg
DNNA bought Rio
Sigmatel bought the Empeg bits from DNNA Freescale bought Sigmatel


Can you confirm this?

Regards

Bo Herrmannsen

It's a start, I'll be curious to see where this goes.

Regardless of the outcome, thanks for pursuing this.

well... i will hunt this down.. either they say yes or no... or i will mail all their offcies once a week

Interesting that Freescale (nee Motorola) ended up with the empeg rights.

Mr. Klein

I'm just a private individual who are also a memeber of a forum page (http://empegbbs.com)

My interest in the software is mainly to be able to continue the development and bug fixing the software

There are no plans to make money on the software and we hope that we can get the software on a GPL license, and of course also any releases we make will be under GPL and frre of charge, that's what i have understood the rest of the forum/board would like

We have not made any plans to relaese another piece of hardware, but would Freescale mind if we did that in the future?

Also do you know the product that the software are made for?


Best regards

Bo Herrmannsen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Klein Kevin-RZAT60"
To: bo herrmannsen
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 3:47 PM
Subject: RE: Empeg, Riocar



Mr. Herrmannsen,

Your inquiry was forwarded to me by our public relations folks.

We have bought Sigmatel and the associated intellectual property,
although I'm not familiar with the entire trail and what software rights
made it through all the transitions you outline below.

Can you help me understand what organization you represent and your
specific interest in the software rights to help better answer your
question?

Regards,

Kevin

Nice to see that this is moving up the ladder.

well i just hope that they say yes

but if they do.. will mark blend hijack and the software to one piece?

Just a suggestion, you may want someone whose first language is English to look over your responses, just to make sure you don't miss anything.

And no...the player and the kernel will most likely always remain separate. In fact, the kernel will probably get lighter weight as features that should have been in the player are added where they should be.

Thanks for doing this.

I too knew this had been discussed many many times - but I had no idea it had never been pursued <blush>.

I hold out little (but some) hope since I think there are two problems:
* legal - and Boelle is doing something about this
* practical - the source code is simply not available

If anyone had a copy of the source then I think it would have leaked out by now - and I think someone would have gone chasing Freescale for permission to cover ourselves.

However - could any of those who *may* know of the last location of the source see if there is *anything* that could be released given permission?
That way Boelle has a clearer request:
"Dear Mr Freescale, if we find a copy of the code for this 10 year old obsolete car stereo, can we submit it to you in order that you can license it under the GPL."

Otherwise we're asking for rights to something that may not exist and possibly asking Freescale to actually go searching for the code. The less we ask for the better our chances.

Bo, I (personally) think it may be better to be more discrete - saying
"We have not made any plans to relaese another piece of hardware, but would Freescale mind if we did that in the future?"
sounds like it would raise alarm bells. Keep focused on the software.

We need to ask Freescale to go searching for the code. (They probably wouldn't have to search very far -- it was all still on Sigmatel's SVN server when Sigmatel closed the Cambridge office at the end of 2007, so presumably it was also still there when Freescale bought Sigmatel a few months later.) Even suggesting that the code might exist anywhere else would damage our case IMO -- and not merely because it doesn't!

Peter

Should also ditch the GPL idea -- that's also scary to suits. Perhaps leave it to them to ask for a license suggestion, then bring it up.

To fix/improve the code on the existing platform, a much more restrictive license would do fine.

Cheers

I would also try to point out to freescale that we represent a community of open source developers that have kept a 10-year-old product alive by continuous improvements, despite being hampered by lack of source.

np mate.. and yes i should let some correct my respons, but i guess most will understand and if not ask me what i mean

i will do when i get a response back, but at least i have them a link to the bbs

I agree on this one, the proper way to do this is to ask them first and let them look for the source..

it might be that they come back nd say" we can give you the rights, but we cant find the source" then a reply could be "is it ok if we search for the source and get back to you if we locate it"

just a thought

just confused here.... is the kernel the same as hijack ?

Bear in mind that one of the things Freescale will not be allowed, by their contracts with third-parties, to give us, is the MP3 decoder. If there was a release, we would need to then integrate an open-source one (or put up with Vorbis, FLAC and WAV only). This in turn means that whatever licence they picked would need to be LGPL-compatible (for mpg123) or, preferably, GPL-compatible (for madplay).

Peter

If anything does come up where they want to meet with someone in person, I'm willing to do so if they are in the Austin area. I know Freescale has a large presence here, as did Sigmatel. Showing them in person what we are talking about might help.

yeah, but is there any practical difference ? i mean an opensource one could even be better.. but might be wrong

thanks mate... i dont know if they have any office in denmark... and i cant afford to travel.. i just started this because i thought e-mail could do it for starters.. never thought that they would reply

Boelle, here are some words I've just jotted down that you should feel free to reuse any or all of in your correspondence with Freescale:



Peter

thanks a lot peter... i could not do it better myself... i think i will mail them that one also...hmm... just need to think if i should start the e-mail like this: Here is what the community of the Empeg car-player have in mind....

Yes. Sort of.
You have the choice to use the standard configuration OS as supplied with the empeg or the Mark Lord modified OS (nicknamed 'Hijack").

Yes. Hijack is a modified version of the original empeg kernel. The original empeg kernel, is a modified version of Debian Linux. All of those things are open-source.

It's the closed-source player application and its subcomponents that you're talking about with Freescale.

yep... but why not take the best from the car player and hijack and make a new kernel based on that?

Mark is already doing the best possible work on the kernel.

In fact, many of the features Mark is adding to the kernel would work better is they were put into the player software. Mark is doing a lot of "tricks" that allow the kernel to handle special features that you'd normally do inside a piece of application software.

I would predict that if we could get the player software code open-sourced, then Mark would move a lot of his kernel features back into the player software where they belong.

Because good Linux development practices mean that there are some sorts of things that it's most robust and elegant to have in the kernel, and other sorts of things in "userland" (the player code). Many of the differences between Hijack and the stock kernel, perhaps most of them, are ingenious but sometimes slightly ad-hoc solutions to problems that could possibly be solved more elegantly in a modified player.

Peter

I think what Peter and I are both trying to say, is that if we can get the player code open-sourced, then of COURSE we (and by we I mean Mark probably) will be making changes to the kernel, too. New ways of doing things will become available to the empeg community when that happens.

that was what i had in mind... of course we need the source to do this