BPI-RV2 uboot still incomplete

strlcat · December 8, 2025, 1:50pm

Can someone comment on this please and escalate this issue to banana-pi team responsible for RV2 router?

github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-RV2-SF21H8898-OPENWRT-BSP

U-Boot SPL is not open source

opened 10:27AM - 20 Sep 25 UTC

U-Boot SPL is not included into the uboot tarball available at https://drive.goo…gle.com/file/d/1DoJ_zEdl-4bOxOQ2IQVxaldJP6LOmnNk/view?usp=sharing nor instructions are available how to build it. On device flash, partition named FEL contains SPL which highly resembles typical uboot SPL hence it also falls under GPL license violation. For example, it contains string "Recompile with higher MEMORY_BANKS_MAX?" which belongs to `common/fdt_support.c` file in uboot source tree which is licensed under GPLv2+. And many others. Even the line printed to console "SiFlower SF21H8898 Bootloader (build date)" is just a replaced uboot banner. There is no reason to hide how a DDR3 DRAM is trained. Most of binary consists of GPLed uboot code. The binary can be easily reverse engineered and such instructions can be added to source tree and rebuilt SPL can be restored. However, to save time, and to fully commit to open source community, it would be better to release the remaining missing part, as it is already obliged by GPL compliance. Note that this does not undermine an effort done by the people to bring this amazing product to live. Treat it as a friendly request to provide a missing part. Thank you!