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laforge, 02/19/2016 10:48 PM

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= Legal Aspects =
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This page documents our position on legal aspects of the project.
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Since there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion regarding the legality of any independent open source work in GSM,
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we explicitly state that this is a legitimate project.
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 * We do not infringe on any copyright
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 * We do not reveal any trade secrets
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 * We do not break any digital restrictions (DRM)
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 * We do not implement or break any encryption algorithm
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== Copyright ==
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This project honors the copyright of third parties.
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Specifically, the source code published by us does not infringe on copyrights of others like Motorola, TI, Vitelcom or Compal.
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The software we publish for the GSM baseband is either original development by the project engineers or source code that is taken from sources licensed under GNU GPL.
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== Information Sources ==
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We outline that we have only used public sources of information in the development of this project.  There is no infringement on trade secrets of any sort.
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=== Documentation on the GSM protocols ===
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The GSM protocols are fully documented and specified by the 3GPP.  They are publicly available for everyone.  
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There are no trade secrets involved in imlpementing the GSM protocols, including the Um air interface betwee phone and network.
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The only parts that are undisclosed are the optional encryption methods called A5.  Despite their secrecy, they have been thoroughly documented and broken in
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academic research and resulting publications.  There is no trade secret in that encryption anymore.
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Furthermore, in those phones that our software runs on, the A5 encryption is implemented as a black box in hardware.  Our software contains no information
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about the GSM A5 encryption at all.
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=== Documentation on Phones ===
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Service Manuals including circuit descriptions and full schematics are widely available for all major phones, including the Motorola phones that we started this project on.
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Such service manuals are authored by the phone maker and distributed to cellphone repair shops around the world.  They are intended to aid understanding the phone hardware.
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There are dozens of web sites in various countries around the world that make those schematics available.  There is no serious attempt by any phone maker we know of to
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halt the unofficial circulation of service manuals.
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We officially buy the respective phones, and we wish to simply make our own software interoperable with the hardware.
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=== The Vitelcom TSM30 source code ===
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In 2005, the complete source code of the software running on the Vitelcom TSM30 phone was uploaded to the popular open source sourceforge.net website, from where it is publicly
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availalbe for download.  According to sourceforge.net statistics, it has been downloaded thousands of times ever since.  As the download was never removed and no action has
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been taken by the copyright holders, we assume that the source code was legitimately published, but under a non-permissive license.  We do not use any of that copyrighted
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code in our software, and we do not distribute that source code.  We therefore do not infringe its copyright.
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Even if its publication was unauthorized, its public availability for five years clearly outlines that any information contained in it can no longer be considered a trade
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secret.  Therfore, any information we deducted form it  about how the digital baseband hardware works is not a trade secret either.
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=== The leaked Ti Calypso documentation ===
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At various places on the internet, two documents with register-level details on the TI Calypso DBB circuit have been published.  While those documents contain notices
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of confidentiality, their availability online once again indicates that the information contained in the documents is no secret, at least not ever since somebody might
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have broken an NDA and publicly disclosed the information.
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== Using modified phones on carrier networks ==
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Note: ''So far'', our custom software '''does not activate the transmitter''' in the phone.  Therefore, it works in receive-only mode as of now.
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There are many reasons why we do not recommend or endorse operating our software on carrier networks
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 * the software modifies the RF parameters of the phone, which are part of the regulatory approval
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  * regulatory approval of the phones is lost once our software is installed
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  * operating equipment without regulatory approval is illegal in probably almost all jurisdictions
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 * our software is in early development stage, and while we keep our best effort, we never 
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 * the terms and conditions of carrier networks vary, but will likely not allow the use of uncertified/unauthorized phones
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We therefore only use our software with our own GSM test networks, e.g. using OpenBTS or OpenBSC with BS-11 or nanoBTS.
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'''DO NOT USE OUR SOFTWARE ON NETWORKS WHERE YOU DO NOT HAVE EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO!'''
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