[clockworx]

stoic said:

I wonder if Pandigital did all the development (HW/SW) themselves or hired another company to do it. Looking at the fcc docs and pics of the device I havent seen anywhere they Pandigital, are mentioned. It could be the Chinese have all the code. I did see a server name in some of the cfg files in the firmware: serverblabla.nj.dontknow. The NJ part was interesting.

Whoever wrote the script to update the wifi signal status has a distinctly asian sounding name. You'll see it scroll by every few seconds in logcat.

[gortyargen]

The PDN was manufactured by a Taiwanese company. Chances are they are the same people who have been making their digital photo frames. My guess would be that Pandigital are a US company who just subbed everything out to the manufactures of the frames with a "make us a frame which is a reader". I'd bet my biscuit that the source code developers are based in Taiwan

[bornagainpenguin]

Email sent. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, so the more polite emails they get the better!

--bornagainpenguin

[SpinControl]

Well, they just got a NASTYGRAM from me. Basically, I'm getting a little frustrated with the buggyness of this unit and the lack of updates recently. As someone warned, this community may DIE once newer products come to market, so where will that leave us nonprogrammers?

Therefore, people on this forum need to keep bugging them, and even threaten to return units. If this Novel remains in limbo, I may return it to Kohls in a few months and get something more robust. Yes, it'll cost $50-$100 more, but it'd be worth it if the new product is useful leaving the Novel as a paperweight.

[jackbox]

I mentioned this in the FCC filing thread but here it goes again. The manufacturer of the Pandigital Novel is Inventec Appliance Corp. a large Taiwanese ODM manufacturer of electronics for a myriad of companies including, but not limited to, Apple and HP. Pandigital is just a marketing company that contracts for products to be made and then markets them in the US. If you want source code, which you probably won't get, email Invetec. The GPL doesn't require disclosure if the device contains proprietary code. Pandigital has a lot of proprietary code in there, so they are under no obligation to release the source or instruct Inventec to do so. It is highly unlikely they would release the source as it contains code written just for them.

[oilyfool]

Just sent PD my request to release source code, per lawman's initial request in this thread. About all I can do, as I'm just a former lurker and avid admirer of all your development efforts. As a noob, have been reading every single thread on this site referenceing the PD Novel, and keep holding off on hacking it because new hacks keep coming out from you geniuses nearly every 3-5 days!

Keep up the good worx

[bornagainpenguin]

jackbox said:

I mentioned this in the FCC filing thread but here it goes again. The manufacturer of the Pandigital Novel is Inventec Appliance Corp. a large Taiwanese ODM manufacturer of electronics for a myriad of companies including but not limited to, Apple and HP. Pandigital is just a marketing company that contracts for products to be made and then markets them in the US. If you want source code, which you probably won't get, email Invetec.

Okay, then what do you think about inviting Inventec Appliance Corp to send a representative to the forums? They aren't legally obligated to do anything, but perhaps even so the company could see the benefit of having obtained the goodwill of the largest Android slate community on the web? If they can't give us the source code directly, they at least might be able to point us in the right direction. And at the very least we'd make wonderful testing subjects...

--bornagainpenguin

[lawman]

I don't see why we shouldn't add another company to request the code from, but I am certain the hardware mfr is not doing the software development. Fire and forget in that market segment.

[roebeet]

Email zhenghui.li@archermind.com - that's the email in the init.rc. :-)

As for the comments on the closing window, I totally agree. I'm no programmer, but going on what I've seen and read here, Pandigital (or whoever developed the software on this thing) added some non-standard items that make hacking this for real much more difficult. Right now the geniuses here have done a fantastic job, but without the source code or the ability to alter recovery to make backups / Nandroid type restores its going to become increasingly worse. It's cheap and easy to return if you get a dud and it's the only game in town, which is the main reason why we all like this thing. But once there are other tablets out there in the retail market, their days are numbered.

[SpinControl]

Latest reply.http://zspphg.bay.li...Code.jpg?psid=1

edit: updated link

[bornagainpenguin]

SpinControl said:

Latest reply.http://zspphg.bay.li...Code.jpg?psid=1

Can I recommend you repost that with blacked out contact information? The last thing we want if for a troll or two to start harassing your contact in our names...

--bornagainpenguin

[SpinControl]

bornagainpenguin said:

Can I recommend you repost that with blacked out contact information? The last thing we want if for a troll or two to start harassing your contact in our names...Just a suggestion. The first thing I noticed was that there were telephone numbers in the attachment and I've seen how those can be abused on the internet.

--bornagainpenguin

I was thinking about blacking the information out, but the contact is probably the owner of the PR company, and that information is public. I did a BING search and found the company and phone number easily. If you still think it is necessary, I will.

[lawman]

So, I went ahead and reported a possible GPL violation to GPL Violations homepage - The gpl-violations.org project. Here is the substance of the response:

"There are plenty of Android devices where there is an issue. We need to
know a few more things, such as what exactly is in there, where it is
sold, etc.

If it is sold in the US only it would be specifically helpful if you
could check if there is any Busybox inside the device.armijn

"Now I need to figure out what a "Busybox" is... :-D

[bornagainpenguin]

lawman said:

Now I need to figure out what a "Busybox" is... :-D

BusyBox - Wikipedia date= the free encyclopedia Does that help?

--bornagainpenguin

[bornagainpenguin]

SpinControl said:

I was thinking about blacking the information out but the contact is probably the owner of the PR company, and that information is public. I did a BING search and found the company and phone number easily. If you still think it is necessary, I will.

I'm nobody, so don't go by me. I wasn't aware they were a PR company I thought they were Pandigital, if the information is already out there then no big deal.

lawman said:

Now I need to figure out what a "Busybox" is... :-D

BusyBox - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Does that help? Also, this has been reported already apparently with evidence mentioned...

--bornagainpenguin

[SpinControl]

Updated link to latest response:http://zspphg.bay.li...Code.jpg?psid=1

[lawman]

I continue to talk with the GPL-violations.org people, and received this response:

"Since the device does not seem to be on sale in Europe (which makes it abit awkward for us): would you be OK if we forward this report to theBusybox project? They enforce copyrights for Busybox in the US."

Read this... BusyBox Makes me smile... :-D

If you have already emailed to ask for the source code two or more times (this should not be your first option), email togpl@busybox.net

[HaTaX]

Hmm, honestly I haven't seen any evidence of busybox being in there....

If it was, we could use commands like "cp" and such on the command line. I actually had looked at compiling it into one of the releases as it really fills in the missing gaps with android being used like a true linux system at the command line.

I posted this in a different thread, really belongs here, so I'll just post it in this message as well...

Quote

Have another idea for getting the source as well, in some of the system files I've found developers names and sometimes email addresses. Looks like this company had a good amount of input making this build: Archermind | Software Development ServicesNamely the developer I noticed has an email address of: zhenghui.li@archermind.com. He added the autobl line into the init.rc file, he might be a good person to email and ask how the hell we go about getting the existing source code. Honestly tho, we're getting close to the same level of functionality on the device as what it came with. Once rotation and screen acceleration is delt with, there isn't much left to integrate.

[fugspit]

As one of the earlier comments in this thread mentioned, /system/bin/ifconfig is (or is at least based on) busybox.

On my PDN: $ ifconfig --helpBusyBox v1.13.1 (2009-03-03 13:55:28 CST) multi-call binary...Sure enough

# ln -s ifconfig cpln -s ifconfig cp# cpcpBusyBox v1.13.1 (2009-03-03 13:55:28 CST) multi-call binary
Usage: cp [OPTION]... SOURCE DEST
Copy SOURCE to DEST, or multiple SOURCE(s) to DIRECTORY
Options:
-a Same as -dpR -d,
-P Preserve links -H,
-L Dereference all symlinks (default)
-p Preserve file attributes if possible
-f Force overwrite
-i Prompt before overwrite -R,
-r Recurse directories -l,
-s Create (sym)links
# ln -s ifconfig busyboxln -s ifconfig busybox
# busyboxbusybox
BusyBox v1.13.1 (2009-03-03 13:55:28 CST) multi-call binary

Copyright © 1998-2008 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenkoand others. Licensed under GPLv2.See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]... or: function [arguments]... BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix utilities into a single executable. Most people will create a link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox will act like whatever it was invoked as!

Currently defined functions: addgroup, adduser, ash, basename, blkid, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cat, catv, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd, chpst, chroot, chrt, chvt, clear, cmp, cp, cpio, cryptpw, cttyhack, cut, date, dd, deallocvt, delgroup, deluser, depmod, devmem, df, diff, dirname, dmesg, du, dumpkmap, echo, ed, egrep, envdir, envuidgid, false, fbset, fbsplash, fgrep, find, findfs, fold, free, freeramdisk, fuser, getopt, getty, grep, gunzip, gzip, halt, hd, hexdump, hostname, hush, hwclock, ifconfig, ifdown, ifenslave, ifup, insmod, ip, ipaddr, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel, kbd_mode, kill, killall, killall5, less, linux32, linux64, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, login, losetup, ls, lsmod, mdev, mesg, mkdir, mknod, mktemp, modprobe, more, mount, mountpoint, msh, mv, nameif, nc, netstat, nmeter, openvt, passwd, patch, pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6, pipe_progress, pivot_root, pkill, poweroff, printf, ps, pwd, rdate, rdev, readlink, readprofile, reboot, renice, reset, resize, rm, rmdir, rmmod, rtcwake, run-parts, runlevel, runsv, rx, script, sed, seq, setarch, setconsole, setfont, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setsid, setuidgid, sh, showkey, slattach, sleep, softlimit, sort, start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su, sv, switch_root, sync, sysctl, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, tftp, tftpd, time, top, touch, tr, true, tty, ttysize, udpsvd, umount, uname, uncompress, uniq, uptime, usleep, vi, watch, watchdog, wc, which, xargs, zcat

That should make your life easier :-)

[clockworx]

I'm sure that guy would love to get emailed directly by a bunch of end users