Hey GZers,

I'm having a little trouble with Vodafone and getting the sources for the Vodafone Smart N9 Lite (VFD-620), and optionally a system development image that provides root access (since the device has been locked down so as to deny you access to the basic logs you need to figure out why the device is rebooting randomly for no apparent reason).

TL;DR: No-one at Vodafone knows anything about the branded devices they sell, and refuse to raise a ticket without a Vodafone account

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Cue me calling Vodafone to get some information on raising a ticket about this. Nope, we can't do that, sorry. Try live chat. 

So now I'm on live chat, and I've been told no, I need to call Vodafone and get a ticket raised by the "Advanced tech team". Okay, let's try that again.

Called Vodafone and... no advanced tech team. Hm. Well, not one to give up, back to live chat it is. 

Now I'm back chatting with an agent and they arrange a callback for the next 24-48 hours. That's long gone. <sigh>.

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I'm hoping someone here can help get someone at Vodafone to provide at the bare minimum the sources they're required to under the GPL v2, Section 3, those being the kernel, kernel config, build config, and device driver sources so I'm able to build a ROM and push it to the device to debug. For convenience I've attached section 3 below.

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TL;DR: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-standalone.html#section3

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.