Asus Publishes Missing Sources for EEE PC
Following accusations by a US-based blogger that Asus had contravened the GPL, Asus quickly responded by publishing the missing sources.
Shortly after the accusation against Asus was published, the Eee PC maker responded by publishing the source code of the modified components and the driver code for the hardware components. An archive is now online at support.asus.com with drivers for LAN, the HFS modem, and the webcam along with ASUS’s ACPI and Busbox code. Asus also offers the Linux kernel and sources for the Debian 4.0 distribution provided with the Eee PC. Asus did not publish the modified madwifi WLAN, which is dual licensed. Although the sources are now available for the "4G (701)" model, the download pages for the "2G" only contain a BIOS update.
In its announcement Asus states that it published the code to the best of its knowledge, and asks anybody who thinks that the source code for more components should be published to contact the company.
In the same announcement Asus states that it will be releasing a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Eee PC in the near future to give developers the ability to port applications to and customize applications for the mini PC. The SDK will be released on eeepc.asus.com.
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