Re: rtl8180 pcmcia wlan card driver - seeking for help

On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Christian Heimes wrote:

> I hope this list is not the wrong list for my question ...

It's open to general Realtek on Linux questions, but you won't find much
help with wireless cards.

> Then I tried the drivers from realtek
> http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?software=True&refdesign=True&spec=True&other=True&series=2002121.

This is a binary driver for the i386, with the source code only for a
thin shim layer.

Some source+binary drivers might be able to make an argument that
their source layer code maps to a independently defined interface, and
the binary portion is common (or potentially common) to multiple OSes,
thus claiming a loop-hole in the GPL.
This shim layer is clearly not translating to an independent interface.
It is a derivative work of the Linux kernel and thus the whole code set
should be covered under the GPL. 

> ******** RTL8180 Wireless Lan Driver Version 1.0 loaded when
> Oops: 0000
> CPU:    0
> EIP:    0010:[vsnprintf+558/1056]    Not tainted
> EFLAGS: 00010097

You should _expect_ kernel crashes when using a binary driver like
this.

-- 
Donald Becker				[email protected]
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