If you are sending in your unit for the Legacy Upgrade - PLEASE READ

[ScottPDX]

Don, you've drunk the same Cool-Aid

Don,
You must work for Whistler. You here doing your own company's damage control?

You've clearly drunk the same cool-aid as your fellow trolls cpunut and KK2DOG.

I will not be replying to your next post, because I know you must post and have the last say in your deliriousness.

 

[Hamradiostuffing]

The "leave well enough alone" comment could (should) equally apply to whomever released a new version of his hack back in February. Whistler tried to discourage the hack back in September 2016, but someone had to go and up the ante 5 months later.

Then in March, Whistler tried again. But someone else still couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to release another version of his hack a few days later.



Ah, so now "stealing a company's IP and using it in a manner not intended or authorized by the IP owner" is the same as "playing fair"?

In your words: "Wow!"



It's unlikely in the extreme that Eric can "fix" anything that Whistler cannot "fix". He'd have to use exactly the same methods that Whistler would. And he ain't doing it for sixty bucks (less return shipping).

just a bunch of garbage.

 

[kibler]

Hello,

Experimentation is also the case in Amateur Radio. I think of people like Bill Cheek as one of the early pioneers of scanning hobbyists. It is interesting to see the Maker community grow with the same inquisitive and experimental theme. They are also involved in the "Right to Repair" movement, which includes the right to modify.

I got involved in the DOS version of Trunker and wrote a variation that decoded LTR, Multi-Net, and Passport. Trunker was written before scanners supported Trunked systems. I helped decode the EDACS Extended Addressing. I also help with dsd. I have an interest in digital protocols and how things work. These projects have no financial rewards, but they opened opportunities and improved my skill set.

I would not expect a free upgrade, but I would expect a solution, like Whistler offering the DMR upgrade at $60 with Whistler eating the additional costs. I fear Whistler's embedded software engineers have the same vindictive attitude as cpunut, and will keep the marketing people in the dark. I would not be surprised if the embedded software engineers came up with this plan and the marketing people did not fully grasp the consequences if Whistler were found out.

Friday is also the worst day for a press release like this as there is likely no official word from Whistler until Monday.

73 Eric

I agree with you Eric! and if CPUNUT is not working for Whistler???..well I don't know about that, either? "Ego" as another poster put it! And cupnut, it really sounds like you are harming the scanner future with your negative reasoning!! (you are very savy and have a way with words) as it seems you consider all the strategy Whistler released so far, as maybe ok and is good for the future of scanners! I hope I am wrong about you and you had nothing to do with the latest Whistler firmware conflict! It just seems you are to proud of what Whistler did and you are so quick to judge Eric and others on his excellent work to energize the Legacy scanners. In my opinion DMR would never have been made available by Whistler! I am not bashing anyone but Whistler, as I have a locked scanner also??????

 

[bigcam406]

Don,
You must work for Whistler. You here doing your own company's damage control?

You've clearly drank the same cool-aid as your fellow trolls cpunut and KK2DOG.

I will not be replying to your next post, because I know you must post and have the last say in your deliriousness.

Fixed it for ya

 

[thegriff]

But for Whistler to now "lock out" the PRO-668 owners that were soon going to send theirs in for the official legacy upgrade and shut them out of the opportunity, and so soon after announcing the official legacy upgrade. That's appalling and inexcusable.

ScottPDX

Exactly my thoughts. Well put.

 

[DonS]

Don,
You must work for Whistler. You here doing your own company's damage control?

You've clearly drunk the same cool-aid as your fellow trolls cpunut and KK2DOG.

I will not be replying to your next post, because I know you must post and have the last say in your deliriousness.

Ah, stating facts is now "trolling". Thanks for the heads up.

"Deliriousness"? What parts of any of my posts were inaccurate?

 

[fredva]

So, some of you don't know who DonS is, his background, and expertise?

 

[Fasteddy2]

Just hope the man ERIC COTTRELL can work his magic make this scanner GREAT again for everyone..

 

[DonS]

The "leave well enough alone" comment could (should) equally apply to whomever released a new version of his hack back in February. Whistler tried to discourage the hack back in September 2016, but someone had to go and up the ante 5 months later.

Then in March, Whistler tried again. But someone else still couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to release another version of his hack a few days later.



Ah, so now "stealing a company's IP and using it in a manner not intended or authorized by the IP owner" is the same as "playing fair"?

In your words: "Wow!"



It's unlikely in the extreme that Eric can "fix" anything that Whistler cannot "fix". He'd have to use exactly the same methods that Whistler would. And he ain't doing it for sixty bucks (less return shipping).

just a bunch of garbage.

Exactly which part of my post was "garbage"? Please be specific.

 

[Hamradiostuffing]

Don,
You must work for Whistler. You here doing your own company's damage control?

You've clearly drunk the same cool-aid as your fellow trolls cpunut and KK2DOG.

I will not be replying to your next post, because I know you must post and have the last say in your deliriousness.

That is true.

Ah, stating facts is now "trolling". Thanks for the heads up.

"Deliriousness"? What parts of any of my posts were inaccurate?

DonS Seriously

 

[mancow]

My PSR-800 is back to only P25 and I'm not mad. It was an interesting experiment but I bought a TRX-1 the moment it came out anyway.

I'm impressed how they handled it. Instead of threatening the hobby group as other companies have done they just engineered a fix. As long as the Gov isn't the one in the middle forcing one side or the other it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

 

[Hamradiostuffing]

Exactly which part of my post was "garbage"? Please be specific.

You know exactly what I mean

 

[NC1]

I play fair and think a company has a right to make a profit to stay in business. I purchased two PRO-668 radios before Eric's tool came out, and watched my investment into the hobby potentially become a quick loss with no updates being posted on RS website, and the performance of the radio's with RS stock firmware to be abysmal at best on P25 Phase 1 here in Portland.

Then Eric's tool came along and the product that Radio Shack and GRE/Whistler abandoned, (PRO-668) in under two years since new product rollout now had at least a possible temporary reprieve from obsolescence.

I must agree, it certainly had the appearance that GRE/Whistler DID abandon the PRO-668.
Old threads will reveal that they mostly washed their hands of the issue because there was no plan in place to continue. Of course they strung it out that there might be something down the line, but nothing firm, of course.
Speaking of old threads, I thought GRE/Whistler were blaming the contract with RS in relation to not being able to support DMR for the 668. Anybody else remember that?
Well, I would like to know what deal they worked out, or if Whistler went ahead without them and did it anyway. If so, that would be a violation of their agreement. Do I have that correct?

 

[mancow]

Don,
You must work for Whistler. You here doing your own company's damage control?

You've clearly drunk the same cool-aid as your fellow trolls cpunut and KK2DOG.

I will not be replying to your next post, because I know you must post and have the last say in your deliriousness.

Well, he is the man who built it. :lol:

 

[Hamradiostuffing]

I must agree, it certainly had the appearance that GRE/Whistler DID abandon the PRO-668.
Old threads will reveal that they mostly washed their hands of the issue because there was no plan in place to continue. Of course they strung it out that there might be something down the line, but nothing firm, of course.
Speaking of old threads, I thought GRE/Whistler were blaming the contract with RS in relation to not being able to support DMR for the 668. Anybody else remember that?
Well, I would like to know what deal they worked out, or if Whistler went ahead without them and did it anyway. If so, that would be a violation of their agreement. Do I have that correct?

I think you are right about that. Radio Shack told me when I called them and they said that Whistler would not give them the firmware.

So who is telling the truth here? Really I should believe Whistler? Oh I went out a bought a Bearcat today.

 

[DonS]

You know exactly what I mean

No, I really don't. I stated facts. I don't know what part might be construed as "garbage".

My next post will be a somewhat detailed timeline of events, going back to 2007. If you want to voice an opinion on the subject, you should probably read and understand that post.

(Note: pretty much all of what will be in that post can be gleaned from RR forums. Of course, most people here understand that I might have a little more knowledge than the average RR poster.)

 

[Wackyracer]

Plenty of engineers egos crushed in this thread, apparently they don't like it when someone figures out something they probably told their boss's was un hackable.

 

[DonS]

Again, there is no issue here. What personal responsibility do I have to take?

Since the first GRE scanners that supported firmware updates (PSR-500), GRE and Whistler have tried to protect their intellectual property, keeping people from loading one scanner's firmware into another scanner. Since December 2016, you have released several versions of a utility whose sole purpose was to defeat those efforts.

http://forums.radioreference.com/gre-scanners/335862-dmr-nxdn-systems.html#post2623575

GRE implemented a method that prevents loading the wrong firmware in the scanner

You acknowledged that what you were doing was intended to circumvent copyright:
http://forums.radioreference.com/gre-scanners/335862-dmr-nxdn-systems.html#post2623814

The modify on-the-fly method is a traditional work around for distributing changes to copyrighted programs

Whistler apparently anticipated you releasing something that would circumvent their copyright (and potentially cause vocoder licensing issues) and changed their code to discourage such circumvention. With WS108x CPU firmware release 3.9 (Sept 2016) and later, if someone loads WS108x firmware on a non-WS108x scanner, they'll get no digital decode.

On 18 Dec 2016, you announced the release of your tool that circumvents GRE/Whistler's long-standing protections.
http://forums.radioreference.com/ra...loaded-whistler-dmr-firmware.html#post2683372

People quickly realized that using your tool to load any version of WS108x firmware 3.9 or later (current rev on that date was 4.4) results in loss of digital decode. They can back-rev to 3.8 and it all works again.

On 17 Feb 2017, you announced a release of your utility which defeats the protections Whistler added in 3.9:
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-14.html#post2718793

I fixed the experimental transcode function so WS-1080 firmware, up to Version 4.5, will work properly in the PSR-800, PRO-668, and Pro-18.

At best, that statement is incomplete. You didn't merely change the "transcode function"; you added code and data which modifies the Whistler executable and its checksum - the sole purpose of that change was to defeat the 3.9+ protections. Also, you're no longer "experimental" - the experiment was a success in December. Now you're just defeating more protections.

On 17 Mar 2017, Whistler released WS108x CPU firmware version 4.6. In yet another attempt to protect their property, Whistler encrypted the binary (in addition to both the "obfuscation" present in all firmware back to PSR-500 days and the protections in version 3.9 and later). People realize that they can't use your utility to load firmware 4.6. You clearly understood that defeating that encryption was likely illegal:
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-18.html#post2734973

It might be possible to work around this, but I have to tread carefully. People outside the US have more leeway.

On 20 Mar 2017, RR user n3617400 announces that he has removed the encryption Whistler applied to WS108x CPU firmware 4.6. He shares the resulting file:
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-18.html#post2736744

hi everyone.
i'm convert the ws1080 cpu firmware 4.6 from new obfuscate form (524292 bytes) to old obfuscate form (368340 bytes).
https://www.filemail.com/d/nwyhwmtlufwpkci
can anybody check this firmware? i dont have pro-668. thanx.

While you're understandably reluctant to perform the decryption yourself, you're not at all hesitant to take advantage of Whistler's code once someone else has decrypted it. On 21 Mar 2017, you announce a new version of your utility, one which uses the 4.6 file above:
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-18.html#post2737275

I have not even tried to figure out the new obfuscation yet, since it is likely I could not distribute a program using the new method.

Since a firmware file with the old obfuscation suddenly was made available, I applied the suggested fixes and it seems to work. The changes have been committed and pushed. A new version of GREFWTool is available to support 4.6 in the old obfuscation format only.

On 27 Mar 2017, you acknowledged that one of your goals was to stay just barely on the "correct" side of the law:
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-20.html#post2740557

I have given some thought about adding the new code to the tool. I think it would open me up to more liabilities without much benefit. I have to tread carefully not to be part of the unintended consequences of US laws.

On 03 Apr 2017 you acknowledge that you at least recognize (if not respect) the concept of "intellectual property":
https://forums.radioreference.com/r...ded-whistler-dmr-firmware-20.html#post2744580

Whistler is trying to protect their intellectual property.

And, despite knowing this, you still released several versions of a utility over 3 months - a utility whose sole purpose was to defeat such protections. (In anticipation of "it was just an experiment": Nonsense. If that was the case, the experiment was over in December 2016, when you demonstrated to the world that you could load Whistler's 3.8 firmware onto a PSR-800, PRO-18, or PRO-668 and the result would work just as well as a WS108x running 3.8. Continuing past that point, supporting versions 3.9 and later, went way beyond a successful "experiment".)

Back to your question above:

What personal responsibility do I have to take?

From a purely legal standpoint, perhaps the answer is "none". Perhaps not.

Having worked closely with Craig for several years, I'm pretty certain he isn't referring to legal responsibility. I'd speculate that he's really talking about moral and ethical responsibility for creating a tool that defeats Whistler's various attempts at protecting their intellectual property. Responsibility for making such a tool available to the public. Responsibility for updating that utility every time Whistler makes improvements to their protections.

 

[scan18]

This is really fascinating stuff. We can argue for weeks who is right or wrong, but the thing that Whistler may have trouble explaining is why did they willingly perform the upgrade on all the hacked units during the month of June? If they had known that the units would be "locked out" starting from July 1, then it seems they should have said they would NOT touch any hacked units from the start. Now they are in a situation where they need to say that units MUST be back to original firmware before sending them in for upgrade. But users now are unable to roll back and blame Whistler for that. Whistler now has to take the position that the user installed unauthorized firmware, so the user is at fault.

Good lord, now it's an epic finger pointing battle. This will be very interesting to see how it plays out.

 

[Fasteddy2]

Let me understand this all that ERIC COTTRELL did was let lose the full potential of the Pro-668 scanner and whistler takes right back to day one ....