Slashdot Mirror
IP Theft in the Linux Kernel
"They just took my code and filed off the copyright" said Søren. "This is clearest with the two header files hptraid.h and pdcraid.h. Compare these with FreeBSD's ata-raid.h, and just look at the similarities." And it's true that these two header files certainly look like a chopped up copy of the FreeBSD header, after a quick search-and-replace. "The reading of the RAID config from the disks is their own code, but is clearly "inspired" from our code," said Søren, "but that's encouraged by the license. It's the verbatim use of the other code without retaining the copyright that's the problem."
ata-raid.h, and the other files, are copyright Søren, and released under the three clause BSD license, which includes the restriction "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice". So using these files, or significant portions of them, in your own code, without retaining the copyright information, as has happened here, is prohibited.
You may be thinking "This is only a couple of header files, what's the big deal?". As Søren says "The problem here is that the structures in the headers is the whole story. That info tells how you read the proprietary struct off the disks, and was reverse engineered and documented by me after a lot of effort." Søren's intellectual property is tied up in those files.
Right now, Søren is in discussions with the authors of the Linux ATA drivers (employed by RedHat) to ensure that his copyright notice is returned to these and other files, and to ensure that this situation does not recur. And it is hoped that an amicable solution can be reached.
this is crazy, linux developers need to give props where props is due.
E.
-
This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
And yet, if it had been incorporated into WinXP, nobody would ever have been the wiser. Who would this guy be whining to then?
Seriously, though, if someone used the code, it must be used under the correct license. Same as if someone uses the linux kernel. They gotta use the GPL.
Again, copyright (and licensing) is a double-edged sword.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'm pretty sure BSD and Linux use different "copyleft" variants-- what impact will this have on the source code? Is Linux even allowed to use the BSD code without changing their License to match BSD's? I seem to remember the BSD license being slightly fascist...
-Ted
-Legion
Granted, I think most of us expect code to be stolen from GPL products and stuck into proprietary products. It struck me as odd that BSD code would actually be put into a GPL program improperly, considering the only requirement to my knowledge is the copyright notice they discussed.
It was mentioned that the authors of the Linux kernel code worked for Red Hat. We can't be certain but I speculate that they didn't want to appear "lazy" by "stealing" anyone elses code, regardless that it was completely free. Perhaps it was just an oversight. I hope we see an update in a slashback in the future.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Ok, this blows monkeys. For your own brothers to not give you props for a job well done and lots of work... I'm speechless..
Aliens? Magnetic Rings?! Bah! Who needs that when we have
Why post this on Slashdot when the issue is nearly resolved? If you want to send out a message then the place to post would be the Linux kernel mailing list.
Monkey sense
No kidding. He's just lucky the DMCA doesn't apply to reverse engineering hardware specs...umm...right?
Even though the license was violated by other free software developers, I'm glad to see him pursuing this. If we ever want to see the various free software licenses accepted by the general community, we need to show them that we take them seriously, even if that means going after some of our own.
Certain code, although originally discovered/written by one individual will look a lot like the code of others, especially when that code is interfacing with hardware. I can only initialize a video card one way, with all the registers being set in the same order... Now if I don't consult the web, or anyone elses source code, and write a video driver, someone else, who wrote one for the same hardware first, could claim that I cut and paste his code... Even though I haven't even seen it.
Just because the code looks the same, doesn't mean it was stolen... There are only a limited number of ways to get certain hardware to work in software, and most code reflects this.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
This sort of thing ("borrowing" of code without following the rules) happens all the time. The good news is, with Open Source it is easier to find and correct.
;)).
I just hope the offender can be identified and given the chance to ask forgiveness (sinner repent!
So much for respecting IP laws and copyrights, eh fellas?
I mean, come on, keeping a copyright notice with a piece of code is infinitely easier than complying with the convoluted GPL, and the kernel hackers couldn't even do that?
Shame on the hackers who filed off the copyright notice. I can't quite put blame on Linus, since he probably accepted the patch whole and assumed it was original code, but the people who did this have tarnished the entire Linux project.
I'll giggle if MS is ever caught using GPL'd Linux code, seeing as the kernel maintainers no longer have a moral leg to stand on.
he's right that the copyright should have been propogated. but this hardly counts as IP-theft: move along, nothing to see, move along...
The BSD license lets you do just about anything--
how hard can it be to preserve a copyright?
That's pretty blatently disrespectful--I wonder
how much other code in the Linux kernel has
been "borrowed" in the same way. The BSD
developers explicitly encourage using their
code in their license--the least Linus could do
is respect their request to keep the copyright
message. I hope Linus makes a statement about
this--after all, it will all come back to him
since the system has his name, and he manually
reviews all kernel changes in it.
Why innovate when you can steal the best?
The BSD license has an "advertisment" clause that requires the software give credit to the developers.
This is contrary to the GPLs "no additional restrictions" clause. Thus you cannot just take code from a BSD licensed project and import it into a GPL licensed project. Not legally at least.
Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
First GNOME steals from khtml without attribution and now this.
Oh -- and steals is the right term.
This is one of the few ways you can steal BSD'd code. The license lets you do pretty much whatever you want.
Proper attribution is not a big thing to ask, especially as meager compensation to a job well done. If the code's worth taking, it's certainly worth attributing.
The worst part is that it allows the Microsofts of this world to say that free developers really aren't that different from themselves.
Phooey.
Of course, I wouldn't propose that we allow violations of open source liscenses to continue unchecked, just that the opportunity for good faith resolutions be allowed before crying "Boycott!".
And things like this will just keep happening time and again, with the same "it was an honest mistake, and now that someone noticed it, we'll fix it promptly." Surprisingly, I think I've seen similar stories about other, supposedly more sinister movements and organizations.
So, now that this happens, how is it prevented? How is it fixed? Can one non-existent organization sue another non-existent corporation? It doesn't seem to be very enforceable.
This should really be addresses as a wider issue in the Linux community. While we all place great importance on the 'open-source' movement, we also need to ensure that Linux polices it's own code-base and keeps itself in compliance with the GPL, and other license-of-the-week trends.
We must try and validate our work in in the eyes of the corporate (and IP-trigger-happy) environment that we are trying to penetrate if we want to get accepted as a viable option.
hmmm, where will we find this kind of un-attributed code violations next? I sure as hell don't want to have Microsoft breathing down my neck because someone recycled propriatry code and invited the bull into the china shop.
food for thought
(caffine for action)
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
Developers give all kinds of reasons for developing free software -- noble spirit, peer respect, etc. -- but one of the big ones is all the shit you don't have to deal with.
... but the odds are with it.
... easy. Yay!
Case in point: there is every reason to think that this author's name will be included with his code in the next release of the Linux kernel source. Think how vastly different this situation would be if this were about theft of proprietary code. Here, nobody's company is at stake, and nobody stands to lose by doing the right thing -- so there are no stupid lawsuits and no hard feelings. At least, I hope it plays out this way
Forget all this paranoia about the venemous GPL. Proprietary code has a really, really high cost of ownership; at a certain point, it's just not worth it. Free is just so
Bravo to Soren: he wants credit for the hard work he did. I 100% agree that it should have been done and is deplorable that it wasn't.
I would like to point out though that there is a strong argument that it was precisely that hard work rather than intellectual property that was stolen. Bear with me, and no knee-jerk mods please:
(1) A structure is just that: a structure. If there is intellectual property there it is in the original designer of the structure.
If this was a structure in nature (such as the human genome or what have you) then there are plenty of people who disagree with it being anyone's IP at all. Unfortunately, in the wisdom of capitalist democracy some people think that they *own* all of our tomatoes.
But this isn't nature, and someone did plan and write these structures and deserves credit. And Soren deserves plenty too for figuring it out and giving it to the world.
(2) You could say that his comments are IP, and that's a pretty strong argument. So perhaps there is more than just good old hard work here. However, it's possible these are just titles of the data structure elements, and titles aren't exactly covered by the same IP standards as other IP.
Oh well. I don't want to take away from the important work, and certainly nothing from Soren's credit. Just some food for thought.
The 3-clause BSD licence does not contain the "advertisment" clause.
It was removed July 22 1999.
-- MarkusQ
No, lucky for us, the DMCA is not retroactive, and I'm willing to bet that ATA drivers were created a bloody long time ago relative to that.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
How the hell can you even ASSUME that the developer did this on accident? Do you think he was sleep walking one night and copied verbatim FreeBSD source code, made some s/*/*/g replacements and was none the wiser the next morning?
Look at every C book, they stole word by word my helloworld.c program that I wrote some time ago!!
I don't harbor any resentment against the guy, but this was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm sorry it had to turn out this way.
-anon
(yes, I have an account; no, I'm not going to use it here)
The BSD people did the same thing with the bttv driver. As long as you don't copy verbatim, as NVIDIA did it (they even left the comments in) and claim that this is all your property, you can't really say anything. Some things have to be coded in a certain way, especially drivers. You can't do it differently if you want to access the hardware.
I haven't seen the code segments they are talking about, so I don't know how far the copying goes, but if it doesn't go beyond what is required by the hardware you can't complain too much. If they learned it from the BSD code how to access the hardware they should mention it somewhere,though. Not that people always do that.
Marcus
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
When did Slashdot suddenly become "The Place" to
complain about license and copyright violations?
"Oh my god, its a license violation! Get
Slashdot on the phone IMMEDIATELY!"
Surprised I havent seen a "do , or we'll post
about you on slashdot" yet.
In this case, I agree with the author of the
code about getting proper credit for his work
since it was reused - but all of these GPL/
license/embedded linux stories lately are
getting tiring.
BRING BACK THE QUICKIES!
Yes. Yes it was. Just finished with further research on the matter. So basically this isn't a license violation, its just obnoxious.
Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
The requirement that a copyright clause remain intact is NOT the same as the dreaded "BSD advertising clause".
In fact, the current BSD license is completely compatible with the GPL (Just remember that the commingled result must be GPLed). See the FSF list of GPL-Compatible licenses.
Reverse engineering for compatiblility is explicitly protected anywhere there are reasonable laws about that sort of thing.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
here's me admitting IANAL nor do i get law at all, but does the admission of reverse engineering here actually put Soren at any real risk?
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
It is the requirement you mention (inserting the copyright notice) that makes the two incompatible. A GPL'd program can't have that "restriction".
If you are cynical you could say that this is an example of the viral nature of the GPL and that RMS wants to take over the world!
Lasers Controlled Games!
IP is important. Copyright is important. Licensing is important. Unfortuantely defenders of all these things are often cast in a bad light because of a perceived association with other groups who misuse these tools.
Just my 2c
RFC2119
Yeah, I hate it when I accidentally search and replace a bunch of variable names in a block of code and then forget to leave out the BSD license notice.
Besides, didn't the DMCA outlaw reverse-engineering?
Well since Søren is not a US citizen the DMCA can't really apply.
This is a widely recognized fact in the computer book business, where it's known that no matter what license or restrictions you try to apply to your source code that's included with the book, people will treat it as if it's public domain.
The open/free zealots love to speculate in public about how much of their code has been stolen by MS and other big, bad companies, but how many more incidents like this do you think you would uncover if you ran an enormous pattern-matching check against all the open/free projects? My guess is you'd find quite a few.
Oh yes, it looks like some software engineer at RedHat tried to pretend working for few weeks and that tried to cover his lazyness by the easiest way, stealing. 'nuff said.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Please check your facts before going off like this.
The GPL does have its problems, and this is one of them. :-)
Those darn microsoft employees. I bet one posed as a linux developer just to do this copyright enfringment.
boy that really gets my goat. stupid microsoft can't keep their hands out of anything!
Without evidence to the contrary, one can only assume that when Søren reverse engineered the proprietary data structures it was legal for him to do so.
Or perhaps you've forgotten the principle of innocent until proven guilty?
Second, reverse engineering is probably more difficult that engineering in the first place. If you can just write your spec and API, hey, you can do what you want and make it how you see fit. Søren had to figure out what corporate engineers did without even being able to talk to them.
Before you slander and defame someone who is working for your benefit, gather some proof to back up your claims.
The kernel with the offending code was released today. It was noticed today. Wait for the response before bundling all your (well founded) anger and firing it at the linux crowds. I mean seriously, give 'em a chance to respond to the problem before condeming them for it. I suspect this was an honest mistake by everyone except the guy who tried to slip it in.
I for one hope they pull the kernel down now and rework it without the offending code, or not put it back up until sorenson is satisfied with the result.
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Need I say more?
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
It's probably been stated, but...
With a name spelled like that, it is quite possible that Søren lives/works outside of the US, and nobody gives two farts about the DMCA where he is.
Also, I believe that the DMCA only outlawed the breaking of protection or encryption or some such.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
... Great Programmers Steal.
It is most definitely a license violation. The first clause of the license states:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer,
without modification, immediately at the beginning of the file
Note that the license has been completely removed.
Um, hahahahaha.
1). 2.4.10 is the latest kernel.
2). VB for 8 years? Has VB been around for that long (I don't know). Also, kernel level programming in VB? Give me a break.
3). Linux performs better on most tasks than any version of Windows does (except games, but the nVidia drivers are changing this).
4). I don't know what kind of "enterprise" enviroment you have, but it seems that you are either lying, using an old kernel, or you have incorrectly setup Linux.
You know what, I won't even waste my time to point out more flaws in your statement. A troll like you doesn't deserve a response. Research everything about Linux that you think is bad and you'll find out how wrong you are.
The copyright clause is not the same as the advertisement clause in the original BSD license which causes the incompatibility. The copyright need only be in the source code; the advertisement clause means (among other things) that if you buy a boxed version, it has to be on the outside of the box.
The license in question here is the modified BSD license. (same page, earlier on)
Reverse engineering is the basis for the entire PC industry. Compaq reverse engineered IBM's BIOS and that created the PC industry as we now know it.
Would you have us throw that all away?
BSD is still very much alive and kicking.
...is not that the code was "borrowed", but what people are saying about it. So far, the highest-modded comments say:
* If this had been included in WindowsXP he wouldn't have known, so he couldn't have complained. Yay GPL!
* Why post this on Slashdot if the issue is resolved?
* This code was reverse-engineered anyway, so why is he bitching when we leech it?
Lord almighty the hypocrites in this place.
My response:
* Microsoft *has* included BSD code, and they've done everything they're supposed to. Why can't we ever have a discussion like this where we admit we're wrong? Sometimes we can say something without promoting the GPL or Linux.
* Why post on Slashdot if it's resolved? Think about this: if MS had taken code from Linux and used it, and then it was resolved, it would still be posted on Slashdot and people would be ready to beat down Bill G's door and crucify him.
* Of course the code was reverse-engineered. And Jesus, how often do we bitch on here about how we should have the right to reverse-engineer? When someone else does it, it's low - when Linux does it (and trust me, a large number of Linux drivers are reverse-engineered), it's the best thing since sliced bread. Remember, kiddies - Linux does something, it's good; Anyone else does the *exact same thing* and it's bad.
Sometimes I just get sick of the people who bash religion and then follow Linus like he's God...*sigh*
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Why was this guy looking into the Linux source code in the first place? Was he, say, stealing ideas?
Stop the flames. Of course he wasn't. What got lost in this story is one of the best aspects of open source programs: complete transparency. Microsoft may be using pieces of the Linux kernel inside its own programs and we'll never know. Ever.
If it was really a copy (we're talking about device drivers and it's very difficult to create original software to describe the same struct) then notice will be given that it was his software.
And another good aspect: this guys is a programmer that has created open source device drivers for FreeBSD. And he was looking into the Linux kernel sources. Probably looking for his own code (which would make him proud) or looking for the chance to help out fellow programmers or just to compare solutions and learn with it.
I'm sorry it happened but we should focus on what's good about this story:
Truth shall set you free.
All the guy is asking is due credit. Reverse-engineering was legal when he did it, and stripping off the copyright notice was not.
;-)
The only one bitching here is you.
And don't forget that DMCA only apply in the USA. Reverse-engineering is still legal almot everywhere else...
My mistake. The license used was the modified BSD license which is GPL compatible. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
Lasers Controlled Games!
You whiney, cheating, stealing programmers ought to be ashamed.
You want people to take your Open Source stuff, use it and then redistribute all code. You want the GPL to rule and code to be free.
Soren is giving the code away. He just want's credit. The developers of Apache, the Kernal, etc. all give their code away, but THEY WANT CREDIT. These guys all use this to cash in and get jobs writing more code, supporting people, etc. BUT THEY GET THE CREDIT.
You assholes make me sick. If you want to GPL your code and give it away, fine. That's your choice. If you want to resuse BSD or other code, fine. But taking credit for it as your work IS NOT!!!
What I meant (really... errr ;) to say was that it wouldn't be a license violation if they hadn't removed the copyright notice. Consider me now properly educated on the matter.
Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
Yeah, tell that to Dmitry Sklyarov.
It seems the original BSD author had a fair-use right to reverse engineer the data-structures, and the Linux authors had a fair-use right to use his work without preserving the copyright. Why? Because you can't copyright a simple list of facts, and if you do, others can use it under fair use. For example, the list of names and numbers in the phonebook are available to anybody to republish without crediting the original compilers, because of fair-use (or at least things used to be this way with copyright law, and why push things the other way?).
Here is the location at RedHat where you can get the code and patch. Link found on The Linux IDE Project Site
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The sad thing about this is that we're NOT talking about a traditional closed-source vendor sneaking away with a chunk of cheese from their rivals and offering it up as their own.
If you use a piece of free software as a part of your own development, does it really hurt your profits that much to admit it? I don't blame them (RedHat) for using perfectly good code, but who decided to blow the headers away?
Back in the good(?) old days of DikuMUD, you not only had to leave headers intact, but you had to show the developers names in the login screen. How would any linux developer like to have to display a nice screen of hundreds of names before their logo came up?
Leaving a copyright notice intact seems like a pretty small price to pay for avoiding months of development time spent on solving a problem someone else already solved. Get a clue RedHat. Your attitude only goes so far...
IIRC there was a slashdot post about winME using the bsd tcp/ip stack M$ got from purchasing WhiteRiver (or something like that)
Yet I haven't seen their EULA giving any kind of credit for it to the BSD community.
Aren't these the same issue?
Besides, didn't the DMCA outlaw reverse-engineering?
Definitely not. First, reverse engineering is entirely legal: Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., and Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. I know there are several more cases involving reverse engineering of boat hulls and other, more tangible things.
As I understand it, the DMCA outlaws things like making and distributing tools for encryption circumvention. Reverse engineering in and of itself isn't made illegal, just the tools to do so.
The structures do look similar, and if the Linux headers were copied then I hope they smack the guy responsible and reinstate the copyright notice. If the files were cut-n-paste copied it should be possible to nail this down, and copying something this cut-and-dried is stupid enough to merit a serious LARTing.
OTOH, if you give two programmers the same specs for a data structure and they have to follow the same coding and indentation style, you're likely to get two very similar structures, right down to the names in obvious cases, even if they don't copy each others' work. The fields themselves have to be specific types in a specific order because that's the way it's laid out on disk, and the coding style's pretty much fixed by the Linux kernel coding standards, and things like dummy_1, dummy_2 for filler fields are pretty standard (those're what I'd pick without seeing any other code, for example), how much variation in the structures is actually possible?
For a real-world example, look at any two independent implementations of the CRC32 algorithm. They're probably identical in everything but some variable names and indentation, because there's only one really fast way of writing that algorithm and everybody uses it automatically. Nigh-identical code, no copying done or required to get it.
-Disclaimer: This is a hypothetical question, and I am not claiming or implying any impropriety on the part of Soren or the Linux kernel authors involved.-
What if the code was developed separately and just happened to come out the same? While such a thing is possible, is it at all likely? Could two programmers who went through the same computer programming programs at school, or use ideas and styles derived from the same O'Reilly books, develop very similar coding styles and end up hacking out code that was verbatim if they were both working on the same thing in different locations and did not know it?
Just a thought.
I write and run the Idocs Guide to HTML which contains a lot of JavaScript. I give away the JavaScripts for free, asking only that the copyright notice be kept in place. The copyright notices are in the JavaScript comments, so there's no effect on the user-interface. Nevertheless, I have seen many places where my scripts are used but the copyright gone.
One person even asked for help on using a script while blatantly refering me to a page where the copyright was gone. Sheesh.
Miko O'Sullivan
It looks like the header file in question is a factual list of the interface to this device discovered by reverse engineering, and its creation and reuse by both the BSD and Linux programmers should fall under the fair-use clause of copyright law. It might be plagiarism to not give credit in the derivative header files, but the Linux programmers would not have been required to preserve the copyright notice in this case.
Well, IP theft could be considered a kind of bug. This is kind of yet another proof open source software is great : like any other bug, it was eventually detected by someone competent about the subject (being ATA here), and is now being fixed.
It would never have been detected in the first place in closed source software. Not even by reverse engineering (illegal in the US thanks to DMCA) as copyright notices reside in uncompiled comments.
Reverse engineering is a widely accepted practice in scientific endeavour. How else do you think StarOffice can even attempt to read Microsoft Office documents? This is one of many reasons that the DMCA has been declared evil and rude by everyone not affiliated with an organization with "Artists Association" in their name.
Key words: His work. Work that was claimed by someone else with a few simple keystrokes. This is unacceptable behavior, Open Source or not. Open Source must insist upon honor among thieves* to be viable and credible.
*: Imagine <sarcasm> tags around that phrase. Reverse engineering is only theft if you actually think the DMCA has any merit at all.
This sig intentionally left blank.
1. Is this a case of a lift or merely a reverse engineer from the original structs for the devices? Could it be that both this person and the kernal koder read the same docs and specs? Or could someone have read his spec and then a kernal koder did a clean room create by asking questions of the person who read the spec. Both are protected uses, and MSFT uses similar things all the time.
2. Is it possible the kernel koder saw a non-copyright version of the code passed thru another hand, from when this person was working on the first set of code and passed it around for comment? If so, while there is implicit copyright, there is not declared copyright, and this is more an oversight than a theft.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
License details are complicated, and certainly the last thing you want to worry with when you're trying to get code working. One would figure, BSD, linux, they're both open source, should be ok, just stick it in and work out the license thing later. And then you never get around to working out the license thing. (Which I assume means contacting the original author and saying "can you make this GPL for us Pleeeese?") I think I may have even done this once because I was unsure of the original program's license (this dual-licensing and related license stuff can really confuse things), I should check.
I admit, though, that removing the copyright all together isn't the smartest temporary solution to the BSD-GPL conflict, but I can see how it might have seemed reasonable at the time (after too much coffee and 24hrs of banging your head against an undocumented interface, as this apparently is.)
If he cut and past the code into there he had to know that the licenses are completely incompatbile if he did include the copyright. He didn't include the copyright and hoped nobody would notice.
The only right way to solve this is have somebody re-do that part of the kernel or work with the original developer to ask him to license that code to the Linux Kernel effort as GPL. Hell he might have been willing to do that if somebody hadn't gone out and stolen it outright.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Okay, so Søren reverse engineers the proprietary data structures developed at great cost by corporations, and then bitches when his work is ripped off by one of his fellow Open Source travelers. Give me a break!
First, what Soren did was not plagiarism (claiming another's work as his own) nor theft (stealing another's property). He just made a part that works as a replacement for a factory part, much like the thriving parts industry in the auto world.
What Red Hat's developers did wasn't "theft", since they were not required to have permission to use or modify and re-release the code. It was plagiarism -- essentially they took some of Soren's parts (which were free for the taking), filed off the serial numbers, then stamped their own on.
It's not illegal to sell someone else's parts if you acquired them legally, but it is illegal to claim them as your own make without permission, regardless of how they were acquired.
The only place Soren might have problems is if the driver algorithms were patented, and even there drivers exist in a world of murky law apart from applications. I seem to remember some abortive efforts by sound and video card manufacturers to squash third-party open-source drivers that got such negative press reaction that they were abandoned.
-- Old Man Kensey
The reason that this should be treated differently from that of say a Microsoft is because the fact is the code is only a small component of a larger project programmed by many authors in the same spirit that the BSD code came out of. They are not trying to profit from the code nor should the acts of 1 individual adversely affect a large conglomerated project such as Linux.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
However, since he wasn't recognized in the first place, now everyone at Slashdot knows who he is, knows what he did, and feels a little debt of gratitude toward him.
Lucky for the guy at Red Hat, he just took off the copyright rather than claimed it as his own...
BTW, to type the character ø in HTML, type "& # 2 4 8 ;", but without the quotes or spaces (another thing I wouldn't have known without somebody screwing up...).
Then tell them that on the linux-kernel mailing list:
.org
linux-kernel@vger.kernel
You don't need to be subscribed to the list to successfully send stuff to it, so post away!
If you actually do want to subscribe to the list send a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org with the following in the body:
subscribe linux-kernel malda@slashdot.org
where malda@slashdot.org will be replaced by your email address.
An archive of the list can be found at http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/
Hope this helps!
The copyright notice must appear on binary-only distributions too.
(8-DCS)
This is an interesting question. I would think that source code (even just headers and data structures) would be considered more than just a "list of facts". I think you're right that we may not want to dig too deeply here, or we may end up establishing some legal precedents that will hurt the open source community in the long run. It seems like it is in the best interest of all parties concerned to settle this outside the court room.
I wonder whether this copyright omission ocurred as a simple oversight or if it is a manifestation of Red Hat's need to "brand" themselves. Life as a commercial entity with a responsibility to shareholders creates a lot of pressure. I hope Red Hat remains successful at balancing that pressure against the needs of the community.
As we've seen with the failures of some other companies, it's a tough job.
I am definately not a "genius" in the Linux community. I am merely pointing out what is wrong (or could be wrong or isn't valid or whatever).
If so, then nothing wrong has occured. It can also be recopyrighted under GPL. Don't like it, just copy and make use of the original BSD one that doesn't have that restriction.
I don't see Microsoft making the source for BSD bits they lift available for others, nor do they have to. BSD allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including sell it, right?
This isn't meant as a troll, if I'm mistaken, let me know. I'm just interpreting the numerous open-source vs free-source, BSD-vs-GPL flame wars that have been going on here forever...
The Linux community has time and again proven that they are all about giving credit where credit is due. Many are passionate about this fact. I expect (as I'm sure everyone else does) that this is a problem that can be worked out to the satisfaction of all involved. This is a trust Linux has built over the years.
That one set of rules exists - we judge the actions of companies, projects and individuals based on their past actions. So far, the Linux community has done nothing to lead us (including you) to believe this was done on purpose, with the intent of stealing anything from anyone. The Microsoft Corp. does not have that kind of track record.
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
as long as he can prove he wrote them first(which is probably the case) then 2 things should happen:
1:Copywrite notice should be put in in the headers
2:the developers need to be 'investigated' and if it was done intentionally, they should be fired.
We can not tolerate these types of activities from anybody, espcially Open Source developers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Linux - the not-so-open source kernel!
This kinda raises the issue of how enforcable source code licensing is. I was wondering what people here think about this.
The only reason Soren was able to see his code had been filched was because it was stupidly filched by an open source project that was publishing their code. Most computer programs are commercial proprietary and closed source. How would we ever know if open source code was in use in these programs?
Is there any enforcement effort on this front? Could there be a 3rd party audit of proprietary code from - say for the sake of the zealots here - Microsoft? As far as I can tell at the moment, if someone accused MS of stealing open source code, MS could say simply, "no we aren't" and that you can't look at our code to check b/c it belongs to us.
How can these things be enforced?
This has happenned in Win32. The BSD license (perhaps not in its present state, but certainly in the past) allows BSD licensed code to be used in a closed-source, proprietary way. No one has been screaming for blood because BSD license allows for certain proprietary uses. Microsoft obeyed the rules set forth by BSD (these rules, of course, being the reason the FSF and others [such as myself] dislike the BSD license, since it allows for just this sort of proprietary "abuse" ["abuse" here is my word... because of the way the BSD license is designed, the BSD authors probably wouldn't classify it as such ;-) ]).
;-) its that its copyright has been changed.
The problem here is that you have two very strict and incompatible licenses. Linux uses the GPL, BSD uses BSD. So the problem isn't that the code has gone uncreditted (tho it has
First, there is no such hypothetical unified slashdot behavior
Second, if someone did bash MS for something like that, as you describe (and I agree, it would be very likely to happen), any pro-MS or any neutral enough slashdotter would counter-bash it. with the very same arguments
So yes, the same rules apply to everyone
CTRL-V 248 in insert mode seemed to work just fine for me (using vim) :P granted, i had to look it up, but thats what help is for :)
yes im a vi whore yadda yadda
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Press F1 to continue.
If I put:
MOV AX,0
in my code, I can guarantee that someone else has that same line in their code. It has to do with interfacing with hardware. There is only a VERY limited number of ways of doing it. In fact, the argument is based on C structs that interface with hardware, which means they pretty much are going to be the same every time no matter what. They could have both independantly reverse-engineered the interface and would have come up with the exact same structs.... duh!!!
unless it's relicensed. When it's included 'as is', thus WITH the BSD license, it's linked to GPL-ed code, therefor it has to be GPL-ed too. But it's BSD-licensed, not GPL-ed. If the original author denies to release it under the GPL, the Linux programmers have to program a new piece of code and release THAT under the GPL.
Open Source is great, but the politics will kill it.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
and we'll never know. Ever.
Umm, ever heard or ASSEMBLY language and DECOMPILERS? If someone has the urge to (and the time/money) they could entirely rewrite Windows just from the binaries.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
How could this could be written much differently and still work?
Also, why are we looking at the
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
BOSS "Do you have that module done yet?" EMPLOYEE "Almost there boss, give me another two days" Employee then goes and downloads some existing code, find/replaces some variables, moves a few things, and BLAM... now he has something that looks like a weeks worth of work. Imagine the porn collection this particular code thief acquired while he was SUPPOSED to be writing the code.
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
In X? COMPOSE-o-/
t ml
t xt
:)
See also:
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/input8bit.h
and
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/multi_keys.
(of course, if you're not running X, this means nothing.)
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
I am very shocked and surprised by this. Looking through the header files it is disapointing that the linux developers, supposedly people more open and original than their counterpoints would lower themselves to define variables in the same way BSD did.
c ontained_in_metal_boxes_configured_on_raid_0, perhaps my_aunt_Marlene0 (naming things after family is cool), perhaps in light of Sept11, osamin_shall_die_with_this_variable_0, fhlaehoiu23987y would have been better as well, R41D_RU37LZZZ_d15K5_0 or maybe an ascii art pictorial discription of the item, (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to picture this).
I mean when it came to defining the variables for the cylinders for the drive they just used the name 'cylinders'! EXACTLY what BSD used!!! and for the number of disks on the raid0 they used raid0_disks!!!
I mean they should have defined it as num_of_boxed_platters_of_magneticly_coated_disks_
The only benifit of naming this the exact same way BSD did would be that it would be clearer and more easily understood for people who program many different unix based disk interfaces.
But who really benifits from that? Escpecially when someone doesn't get credit for making the second variable in a struct, 'disk_number'.
I just said that we don't know the full story.
Any number of things could have happened that led the developer to ultimately violate the BSD license without being aware of it.
Ruling out the possibility is completely naive. Somehow I don't think stealing BSD code to include into Linux is all that foolproof of a devious plan -- leading me to believe that it's much more likely an accident. What possible motive could he have had?
Do you really think the developer said to himself "It is clearly worth risking my reputation by violating the easy-to-comply-with BSD license for my own personal gain of giving code away for free!"?
So yes, 10:1 that this was an accident. I'm not ruling out the possibility of malice, just that it's a lot less plausible.
The GPL does have its problems, and this is one of them. :-)
Did you mean "The GPL does have its problems, but this isn't one of them"? Because I don't see how a couple RedHat programmers borrowing code and not crediting the author is a problem with the GPL.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
'sides which, the DMCA has explicit exemptions for reverse-engineering for the purposes of compatibility, if memory serves.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
So what I've read it's about header files.
.h header files is from my sight a little globally confused. People often say, yay it are just header files.
:o) so better stop here :o)
Copyright regarding
But take in example linux which is GPL. Now on linux systems the glibc include headers often end up including linux headers. Now is not actually including a linux header not -incooperating- the source into yours? So by including in example wich in turn includes doesn't the preproccessor copy/paste linux source into yours?
I had this discussion before, and most people said man it are just header files. But where does a header file / interface start and where stop. Actually the same way it's possible to write a whole probram in a header file.
So far I got no satisfying answer for that.
I know the linux kernel group takes copyright header etc. rather slutty in contrast to projects where every files has it's copyright header, so it's difficult to tell the rules if you're facing only one file. And yet worse if you've a project mixing licenses.
But honestly why does somebody prefering the BSD license feel pestered after all if another project prefers to use it further as GPL. The orignal source is still available with all allowness. And on the other hand BSD allows the enhancer of a software to take away _all_ rights for the user, not giving the source at all. So wheres the problem if they "reduce" the users rights to GPL? After all properitary would be allowed, but GPL not? That confuses me.
Thats why _I_ think normally mature BSD developers should at least allow a double license, BSD or GPL. This makes life far more easier for GPL projects, since they've not to pester around which files are under GPL and which routines under BSD, and what happens if you take function parts from one file to another. So BSD for all people working on this BSD licensed project, and people wanting to use the source for GPL projects should be allowed to "transform" the license to this need, after all it's FreeSoftware we're all wanting, so why making each others life difficult?
I think this is just another GPL vs. BSD knee-jerk fight, instead going about real violations or any rights that have been really harmed.
I understand that BSD is a good license for universities. This way studends working on projects in the school time can continue to use the source later in business. In example I work on projects as pure hobby, in my freetime. So for me GPL is the ideal license, people amy use it, if they modify it thay have to give the source for it, so making my hobby a bit more enjoyfull. I've in example no objections to support somebody in my freetime to take the source to make money without having to give something back, or to support help a manager to take a whole part, in example the BSD stack, instead having to -hire- and pay people for programming alike. So now in example the microsoft case, they shoot at the GPL to be anti-american, pacman a virus and what heaven knows everything else and like to spread it's danger is for programmer jobs, invitation and all. But it's okay for them to take the BSD stack instead paying for programmers job?
Okay got a bit away from the topic
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
The Windows FTP command is bassed on BSD sources, but the user interface does not show any copyright information.
It is said that also the TCP/IP stack is based on BSD sources.
Can anyone affirm that Microsoft source code retains the mandatory copyright information ?
Another question. This headers define an interface between Hardware and Software. This interface was not created by Sorem Schmit. Can he claim copyright rights on them ?
MOD THE CHILD UP!
So what exactly is it Linus is trying to tell us??? Like, is it "10" because it's in-between "9" and "11" -- you know, THE date?
Or has Alan Cox secretly been replaced by a 'Shell'by in Linus' bathroom???
<---[singularity sig]
You may be thinking "This is only a couple of header files, what's the big deal?". As Søren says "The problem here is that the structures in the headers is the whole story. That info tells how you read the proprietary struct off the disks, and was reverse engineered and documented by me after a lot of effort." Søren's intellectual property is tied up in those files.
Am I the only one who found this strange? The idea that by reverse engineering a piece of hardware, you are suddenly the IP holder? I could see the hardware manufacturers making such a claim, but a third party driver writer? I did some engineering to make a fast video routine for modeX, and I hardly think that I can claim IP rights over the modeX architecture...
On the other hand, if the person who wrote it wants some credit, give him some credit. That's all I ask for when I give code away, so I can see why that could be annoying. It probably was an honest mistake on the part of the kernel developer though, I know that a couple times I've released a program and forgotten to put some copyright or some such in it. Incidently, that's why I usually just write my own code from scratch now.
It's been a long time.
Suppose Bob writes an open source program. Then along comes John and examines Bob's program, and learns crucial things from it. Such as how the frobulator encoder works. John then writes his own program which has a frobulator encoder, whose concepts are influenced heavily from what he learned by studying Bob's work.
At what point is John stealing Bob's work?
This is a loaded question. (Just like: When does life begin, at conception or birth, or where inbetween.) Except our question here isn't quite as emotionally charged. (Well, maybe it is for us.)
Back in 1979, I would help other students with their programs. Sometimes after making sure they understood the algorithm, and were writing the code, we would end up with what basically amounts to my design. Should I just make sure that I use different variable names? Should I introduce frivolous structural changes to the program so the instructor doesn't think someone is cheating? (Of course, I became so notorious with my instructors that this problem never came up -- they knew me well enough.) And the other student did end up actually accomplishing the learning.
Returning to my above example. Should John make sure to rename the members of the structure? Alter it stylistically? After all, Bob did the hard gruntwork. In some sense Bob should get credit. What if Bob doesn't want to license or give any permission? Can Bob withhold the know how of how the frobulator encoder works -- especially if it is embedded within open source?
Cearly, the ideal thing would be for John to contact Bob. But this takes time and effort. If John had simply renamed identifiers and altered the style, would an issue ever be raised on Slashdot in the future? (Even if Bob someday examined John's code and noticed the similarity, of concepts, if not actual cut&paste lines?)
And as I first stated, I haven't examined the sources, and this may be a very clear case of cut&past without any credit given. These questions are intended to be hypothetical. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely cooincidental and unintentional.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Ctrl-K o/
in insert-mode is easier since you don't need to lookup or remember some number
This is not what copyright laws protect. Copyright laws protect "works of authorship", i.e. some kind of individual creation. Facts, such as the information how some information is organized on disk or even algorithms are not protected (hence the whole patent issue), at least not by copyright law. (See e.g. Copyright FAQ - What is copyrightable?.)
If someone would create a header file from the same information, it would probably look extremly similar. This is a good indication that the header file is not a "work of authorship".
On the other hand, if the author used something - be it code or only information - from Søren, it would at least be fair to give proper credit.
Claus
Au contraire. Compare the following two snippets of code, taken arbitrarily from one of the other raid header files in the kernel:
struct m {
int a;
int b;
kdev_t c;
int d;
* State bits:
*/
int e;
int f;
int g;
int h;
};
And:
struct mirror_info {
int number;
int raid_disk;
kdev_t dev;
int head_position;
* State bits:
*/
int operational;
int write_only;
int spare;
int used_slot;
};
Those are the same exact structure, no? Exact same data types and everything. I even left in the comments. Now, which of those would you rather have to program with? A structure is *not* just a structure; different source codes for the same structure can be of radically different usefulness. There's definitely intellectual property there.
http://uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0012.3/0 538.html
> I've read everything that I can find regarding support of the Highpoint
> controllers RAID functionality under Linux, and I understand what the issues
> have been. The one promising bit of information that I dug up in this process is
> that the 'pseudo' RAID functionality of the Highpoint and Promise IDE RAID
> controllers is now supported in FreeBSD (4.2-RELEASE and 5.0-CURRENT). My
> question is, can the new BSD code be leveraged to add support for these
> controllers to the Linux kernel, and could we reasonably expect to see such
> support in the near future?
>
> (I think that most all of the relevant/important bits are in ata-raid.c and/or
> ata-raid.h. In
> any event, the IDE/ATA guy over on the FreeBSD side is Soren Schmidt
> (sos@freebsd.org), and he
> wrote all of the stuff for this.
BSD is not dying cause it is constantly being used by Universities cause of the flexible licencing terms. The terms allows the students to use their code within a corporate environment which can allow the student to make extra cash.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
How else do you think StarOffice can even attempt to read Microsoft Office documents?
Because until a couple of years ago, MS documented the file formats on MSDN. They're no longer publically available, but MS will still give them to you if you provide a detailed description of what you want to use them for.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
it's nice to hear about this type of story without reading the phrase
"XYZCorp is suing Foocorp over blahblah"
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Then the Linux community would be in the defensive mode.
How do we ensure that no prorpietary code was included in the Linux OS? This is a question that I believe must be addressed by the gods er developers soon.
Return the bells of Balangiga.
> In fact, has anyone heard anything from the responsible linux developers about this? It seems they've already been tried and convicted being evil, stealing code and "stripping off copyright". Although the latter might me legally true, I doubt this was their intention.
I don't know about you, but if these were responsible linux developers, they would have left the header file intact and appended their comments to the file pertaining to the GPL as well. If you strip out information that is requested/demanded not to be removed, then the developers/code stealers are responsible for their actions and must be dealt with accordingly. Re add the headers or face copywrite infringment.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
This is unacceptable. Again, open source is all about sharing code so we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel, but as was said earlier, we MUST give due credit.
As much as I love Linux and prefer it to everything else, I think 2.4.10 should be boycotted. Nobody should download, use, or install 2.4.10 until a patched version is released that gives proper credit to the BSD people for the code it used. I'd even be willing to jump immediately to a 2.4.11 release, even if it is only minor issues.
The Linux kernel version 2.4.10 violates the very ideals that it was created and lives by. Ideals that even Microsoft of all people adhered to when using code from the community. It's a black mark on the kernel's history.
Why bother.
I much prefer the Quickies to "Slashback".
The GNOME html engine is based on the khtml library, and at my last look, it clearly indicates this in the documentation.
That Header file is a "Work of Authorship" in as much as he wrote that header file. As HE stated, he doesn't have any problem with his ideas being used; the problem is they took the header file that HE Authored and claimed that is was their original work and that they had the copyright on it, which in point of fact they do have partial copyright (derivative work; e.g the changes they made they have copyright on), but so did Soren on his work.
What's the point in stealing someone else's files that can be used for free and giving them back away for free?
Hmmm.... No monitary potential there. Just maybe wanted credit for something he didn't write maybe?
Maybe its me, but something seems kinda strange with this situation. What he seems to be saying is "Reverse engineering is ok, but don't reverse engineer my code."
Creating a struct is a type of engineering, and creating ones own version of it is simply reverse engineering. It is unfair to believe the rules change just because you decided to let others see it. You just did a worse job of protecting your IP than the cuecat people who slashdot laughted at.
And for those of you who think that sturcture defs would be protected should quit whining about fair use.
a single line with an md5 digest to refer to a chunk of copyright text filed in the respository as a file with the md5 as the file name.
Very simple, and no mistaking what text is referred to. E.g., a single line with an URL something like:
f 7f556ee425a0.txt
// Copyright included by reference: http://freebsd.org/copyrights/70ae74fca3ee7f555ac
(The ".txt" is just to make it easy for windows folks). The single line would eliminate a lot of the ridiculous cases where the license text is twice the size of the source code.
Oof. So IP is good when it protects your interests (Free and Open software), but it's bad when it protects other people's interests (monopolies)? Open Source is a kind of monopoly (more a virus); anything it touches becomes free (yes, I know, that is an oversimplification; I don't agree with the point that I'm arguing, I'm just making it). Some people still sell software, not just the services that come with it.
Anyway, yeah. I think it is actually in poor taste that the code was copied, but who, in reality, gives two shits about licenses? I don't read the EULA for Microsoft products; I don't read the GPL for Gnu/Linux stuff. I use BSD/Linux/etc. because they're free, because they're stable, and because they're more suitable as a server. Bollocks to "Free" and "Open" software.
Not really this abrasive,
Mike Greenberg.
http://www.yourmothernaked.com
While it is no excuse for omitting the license/copyright text on the headerfile. However this issue has already been resolved within minutes after Søren notified me of the omission, to the satisfaction of Søren. Unfortionatly, Slasdhot only reports the first half of this, even though the second half of the story has been available for some time. In no way was or is it my intent to not give credit where credit is due.
Please read up on licenses before pretending to be an expert on them in a public forum. The current BSD license *allows* consumers of the code to re-license it under any license they choose, so long as they comply with the rather narrow requirements spelled out in the BSD license.
The only thing the BSD license doesn't allow -- literally, one of only three things disallowed by the license -- is to take BSD code and redistribute it without giving proper credit to the original author (by means of copyright statements). It's rather sad to see employees of such a prominent Open Source vendor failing to comply even with this simple requirement. Unfortunately, as repeatedly evidenced by discussions on Slashdot, most programmers never bother to read the licenses on the code they're using.
Soren could have just asked the Linux folks to add the notice, which they would probably have gladly done. BSD even gives commercial developers permission to distribute the code in binary only form, so why all this fuzz about Linux?
I suspect these serious accusations from the BSD folks are sour grapes: Linux is succeeding wildly while BSD is at best hanging on. So, even minor issues like these are used in attepts to tarnish the Linux image. My recommendation? Add a short notice to the Linux sources "portions of this file derived from ...". And my recommendation to the BSD folks: resolve such issues quietly. This kind of mud slinging only backfires and tarnishes your own reputation.
Look at this link http://www.linux-ide.org/ and especially this one http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/pdcraid/
....
The copyrights are back. And have been since yesterday. But that is not correct since this code is not exactly like the original.
The comment should say something like "Structures derived from ataraid.h written by SS."
And of course the structures should be documented, member by member, even if SS did not do that originally!
Also one wonders who managed to allow both u_int32_t and u32 in the kernel code. One of those alternatives should be removed as soon as poosible. There is nothing as bad as non-consistency in sourcecode anywhere.
Definitely ugly code. Reminds me of work where I have to watch people writing code like that all day long
The first thing we do, let's kill everyone who writes in ALL CAPS.
CowboyNeal for president!
"Hit any user to continue."
I can't find the post that this is supposedly a reply to.
I wish everyone would stop being so overdramatic, it's almost making me sympathize with the bullies that used to pick on computer nerds like us ; )
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Or even:
::GriN:: J/K.
o <BS> /
if you have "set digraph" on.
So tell me emacs die-hards.. would it take more than two hands to hold down all the accelerator keys for this key in emacs?
All I wanted was a rock to wind a piece of string around, and I ended up with the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
Søren is from Denmark (so am I) and we have these three funny looking charactes:
æ ø å
"æ" is like the "ea" in "dead"
"å" is close to the "o" in "holy",
but the "ø" is a bit tricky to pronounce. It's kinda like the "ou" in "mourn", but with more bass.
So Sørens name is pronounced:
S + mourn + honest + n
= Søren! On top of that there is an expression in Danish, which goes "av for Søren", which means "auch for Søren" and you say that when you hurt. And there's another one "Det var Sørens!" which means "I'll be damned!".
It's a common name.... and I need to get a life.
-Kraft
Live and let live
It seems likely to be that header file structure definitions are a functional description of how a piece of hardware works. And if that's the case, that information is no more copyrightable than the telephone book. And if it's not copyrightable, it's perfectly legal to remove the credits and license and redistribute however you want. Not right, mind you, but legal.
Looks to me like he's screaming about copyright infringement and/or license violations without understanding the limited scope of copyright.
314-15-9265
On the one hand, I feel that Soron deserves the credit for his work. Reverse-engineering is NOT trivial, and has been made much more difficult under recent US legislation (eg: the DMCA).
On the other hand, it's hard to villify the Red Hat coders for doing something the license permits, however unethical.
This is one reason I strongly support the GPL. It leaves no grey areas of relicensing and "IP theft".
However, Soron prefers the BSD license. This leaves two choices - debug the license, or accept that things like this can (and probably will) happen, precicely for the reasons I sympathise with him. It IS hard work, and copying is much easier than creating.
My last thought on this is that the notion of "IP theft", with "Open Source" code, should be impossible. We are either all working for a unified goal, or we aren't. If we aren't, then the very notion of "Open Source" is ripped to shreds, and the Bazaar is crushed by the weight of the Cathedral.
On the other hand, if we ARE working to the same ends, then there is no Intellectual Property, and thus there can be no theft of it. If we have abolished private, proprietary notions, in favour of an open, shared environ, then there is no property to steal. There is only a shared resource to access.
And this, dear readers, is the crux of all such arguments. Until people are consistent within their own minds on the issue of ownership, and until some sort of consensus is reached, you can expect the perils of IP to get worse, not better.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
After a few grim moments of comtemplating actually buying and installing Visual C++, it occured to me that these things are probably defined somewhere in the mingw stuff. Sure enough, I found them all in various headers within the mingw package. I copied all these (and a bunch of other little win32 kludges) into a win32stuff.h file that I started including in the various .cpp files.
So did I cross the line? I copied a few dozen lines from various header files in the mingw package (I didn't mention in the file that I got them from the mingw project, but I probably should before I release the port to anyone). Did the the mingw guys copy this stuff from somewhere in all the stuff included by #include <windows.h> ??
Ok, I'll admit that a bit struct that represents the on-disk format of something that was reverse engineered is a bit more substantial than a bunch of constants... but calling it "IP Theft" seems to be leaping to some strong conclusions. Even if both programmers did their reverse engineering independently, aside from using different names, there's not a lot of different ways the struct could look. Even if the linux developer did look at the BSD header file to learn the data formats, how different could one expect his code to possibly be ?? If it's an algorithm with some creative implementation, I can see the accusation, but over a header file that simply documents simple facts seems a bit much. Sure, it can be hard work to get those facts by reverse engineering, but still, the "IP Theft" is simple facts (not really protected by copyright, in my limited understanding of copyright law... IANAL).
And finally, if Søren really does hope "an amicable solution can be reached", why's he turning this into a bunch of bad PR for linux and redhat ?? It's sounds to me like a case of getting mad and posting flames instead of cooling off for a day and thinking it through more carefully.
As far as my porting work for Nullsoft's really cool (SuperPiMP) installer, I hit a big block of very win32 specific code, CEXEBuild::do_add_file at the end of script.cpp. Unlike many of the other bits that I ifdef'd out, this is the one that actually puts the files into the install image, so I can't just chop it off. I will need to completely rewrite this using unix/posix APIs, probably using C library regex patterns instead of whatever wildcard matching win32's FindFirstFile does. I'll probably get back to porting NSIS in a week or two... I might even try rebooting and running it in windows a few times! And, I'm not going to lose any sleep over copying a few dozen constants out of someone else's header files.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Just post anything at all about the situation as an AC and get modded really high.
Where are the backups to your statements?
This reminds me of when there was the large Exodus outage, and in the explanaion story an AC claimed to be some chick who was abuse my Taco (funny since Taco is in Michigan, Exodus cage is very not in Michigan, etc).
Moderators: don't mod up stuff unless there is PROOF or this person has put a real name behind their statements. Posts like this are just trolls meant no spread disinformation.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I haven't closely inspected the BSD license, personally. If in fact, as you say, it's a loophole in it, and by going the BSD route instead of GPL, the author created a vulnerability, then it's a useful object lesson.
Basically it comes down to this:
If you want intellectual property for you and your heirs, go the trade secret or commercial (private code) copyright route. Patents for key technologies are included in this.
If you want to improve society and just want recognition and "free bheer", than go GPL.
If you are unsure, choose BSD. This may be the worst of the above choices, but you can feel honorable nonetheless, even if it's not GPL.
If you are truly a good samaritan, consider GPL with public patents (ones granted to the UN or some useful agency or for public use).
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
so yes, both :)
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
Generally, such names are viewed as not being creative, and hence creating compatible software is possible. I very much hope your view won't start getting adopted because it would endanger almost all open source efforts.
Microsoft would NEVER steal code or concepts without giving credit or licensing the technology...because they know that giant corporations are lawsuit fodder. Here's a couple of lines from the "About" box in IE 5.0:
Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.
Contains security software licensed from RSA Data Security Inc.
Portions of this software are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
Contains SOCKS client software licensed from Hummingbird Communications Ltd.
Contains ASN.1 software licensed from Open Systems Solutions, Inc.
Multimedia software components, including Indeo(R); video, Indeo(R) audio, and Web Design Effects are provided by Intel Corp.
And so on, in plain view, right where it should be. Evil corporation? Maybe. But not so evil that they don't give shout outs to their forefathers. Not that I'm claiming that this little mistake makes RedHat bad or anything -- just that all the anti - windows folks should realize that !Free != !Friendly.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sorry, you are wrong.
By European Union laws and agreements, if a company does _not_ provide you with the documentation you need in order to effectively use hardware, you have the fullest right to reverse engineer the hardware in order to make the fullest use of the hardware.
I'm sure someone could even find you book, chapter and verse.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
Hope this situation gets fixed. And I hope this was an accient merely. If it isn't, then we're facing a problem.
The community cannot possibly get any respect from the world if it's members do not respect plain simple licences. We need to obey other people's licencing habbits.
code reuse..
/* HEADER */ *clickety-click*.... ... ... tada!! Should be done now
/* HEADER */ giving credit to Microsoft..
/* HEADER MICROSOFT OPEN FILE BLAH BLAH FORMAT */
Microsoft: Here are the opensource structures for Microsoft * File Format:
Me: Cool.. I'll add an extra FREE to the end of every variable name and include Microsoft in my
Microsoft: Whoops forgot to add
Me: Sorry about that.. here
Microsoft: Cool, thanks man.
That's what happened. Whoever posted the story blew the shit into some mass media frenzy type of story.. that's considered a troll to me. What a waste of time.
And finally, if Søren really does hope "an amicable solution can be reached", why's he turning this into a bunch of bad PR for linux and redhat ?? It's sounds to me like a case of getting mad and posting flames instead of cooling off for a day and thinking it through more carefully...."
And of course /. gets to run an "article" that generates hundreds of inflamed posts.
Nothin' like mass posts to keep the advertising rates up...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
You got me there. I didn't think long enough (hell I even released lotsa software under BSD license aaaaaarg *kicks teeth with foot*)
:) The BSD license has however the reputation that a programmer can grab the code and do whatever he wants with it. That's not true. This case is a good proof of that :(
The second restriction (the binary has to (re)produce the copyright clause) is probably worse than you might think however. But perhaps that will be done via the normal ways.
I'm though pretty sure the violator here has read the comments on the license. Who is blindly removing lines?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
As Søren says "The problem here is that the structures in the headers is the whole story. That info tells how you read the proprietary struct off the disks, and was reverse engineered and documented by me after a lot of effort." Søren's intellectual property is tied up in those files.
The whole point of copyright with respect to Open Source is to keep proprietary commercialism OUT of our game. When you get right down to it, any sane Open Source coder hates the very idea of "intellectual property" by principle. To argue among Open Source licenses is pure stupidity. We're all on the same team here!
I would like to publically thank Søren for the work he did in reverse engineering and documenting the hpt raid interface. I would also like to thank the Linux ATA-raid developers for their work porting his code to Linux so that my HPT-370 finally works. On the other hand, I believe that in an academic sense, credit should be given where credit is due to promote unity in the Open Source community. A line that reads "Thanks to Søren of the BSD project for his excellent work documenting the HPT interface, on which this code is based" should be sufficient.
If the BSD programmer did the work, give him/her the credit. Nuff Said.
By the way, I'll be ^%$#! glad when Linux/UNIXen become popular enough that the hardware manufacturers will provide us drivers. Drivers in the form of source code/reference drivers (without need for NDA) or precompiled modules ready to load.
Codifex Maximus
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Well I was all for bringing the hammer down on that guy but in light of the way you just described things I stop to rethink that idea. Frameworks shouldn't be copyrightable anyway so if all he stole was a framework then it's really not the same thing as stealing the real code is it?
:) Seriously people who think HTML frameworks are copyrighted are missing a few bolts. I've yet to see a website I couldn't copy and improve upon just by looking at it and I've never seen one that was very unique that didn't suck (users find unique sites confussing).
:)
Or does someone have to pay a royalty everytime they decide to burn a cd with 15 tracks and a slight pause after the 7th track?
As for headers though I guess it all comes down to just how much was the same in both versions and how much of those parts require a certain data structure to work with the device in question. Some structures are just very obvious and are usually shared by a lot of programmers. If the guy did do so much reverse engineering to code those BSD drivers RedHat should hire him and put HIM on the job.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
/.
I switched to Red Hat from Slackware eons ago because the install was less tedious. Slack has since remedied the problem (Thanks Patrick!) and Red Hat's install has gotten all GUI and bloated, but it'd be a lot of work to switch all those servers back now... so I haven't.
However, if Red Hat's programmers can't give Soren whatever recognition he is due, I will consider that to be a valid reason to switch distros to whoever is willing to do the job right.
And I always PAY for my distro CDs. Because that's how we keep the distributors in business in my opinion. Since the CDs are not machine-restricted, it's not like the cost is unreasonable anyway.
So, Red Hat, what's your take? You guys have usually done right by me. Y'all gonna fix this?
--Charlie
(who HATES the BSD license, incidentally - Go GPL!)
It doesn't matter how much code or ideas you borrow. With Open Source code, all you really have to do is give credit where credit is due. (Assuming the licenses are compatible, which they generally are when using Open Source.) And you should really be crediting people for what they've done to help you even if it isn't required.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Read it again - this does not qualify as "work of authorship". It's merely a collation of facts or maybe discovery. There is no copyright on things that you discover. You can't collate a list of songs and call that an original work as much as you can collate a list of phone numbers or cataloging how a particular interface works.
There is no doubt to Soren's claim that he did lots of work, but it's not enough to get a license, and neither does it qualify as IP... he deserves credit for the work of getting it, but bully to actually claiming "original" work in putting together the interface description.
Note that he *did not* invent the interface, he catalogued its behaviour. Someone else invented the interface should get the credit of IP and licensing, etc.
The header files may represent many months of reverse engineering, but it certainly didn't look it.
I would compare this more to a student that used code example from a textbook, but forgot to attribute it. There is clearly no malicious intention to plagurize.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
He probably just hit M-x accidentally-remove-copyright-header in emacs.
Happens to me all the time. Or was it diff --remove-copyright-header.
Not just Red Hat. True, Red Hat employees did the dirty work, but the fact of the matter is that you'll have to use pre-2.4.x kernels if you want to make a true statement (at least until they re-attach the copyright or write their own RAID code).
What is your Slash Rating?
You should never let people look at your source code...
~Hammy
In insert mode: press ctrl-K, then o, then /
("Oh and slash put together" should be really easy
to remember. In fact it's the first thing I tried
when I decided to give this a whirl in vi.
(Now of course if you have the wrong font, it
doesn't have the ø character, but that's not vi's
fault.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It is also quite possible someone else documented the structures and the programmer re-build the header file from said documentation. The structures themselves would likely end up with the same names, and depending on the prevalining naming convention at the time it may look as close as it does without actually being a direct violation.
Header files of this nature are ALWAYS going to look very similar when it is for the same device. As for 'his IP' based on reverse engineering the interface. Sure, except copyright doesn't exist for anything except the actual implementation. documenting it and redeveloping it IS NOT a copyright violation.
A header file such as this is close to simply respecified facts.
Actually.... the phone book IS under copyright. Databases made up of individual non-copyrightable information can still be copywritten.
A struct is NOT just 'a list of things'. It's source code.
You cannot take a phone book, copy it, and sell your own phone book.. it's a violation of copyright.
Since he reverse engineered it as he says, what did he reverse it from? Was that not under copyright or some type of license?
Maybe my idea of reverse engineering is different but I don't think it should be copyrighted.
If it's really the same code, then (a) extract a large payment from them, or (b) nail 'em to the fucking wall and watch 'em bleed.
Given that there are no honest companies in the world, all you have to do is convince them that you WILL carry out (b) to possibly accomplish (a). Just remember that there's no such thing as innocent.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I don't see how the latter makes much difference, because if someone were to, say, rip off the TCP/IP stack for their own closed source operating system, that info doesn't make it into the final product, does it? Could one of the BSD license hawks out there clarify?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
No need to read too deeply into this..
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
Is it just me or have there been many more 4's and 5's today than in quite a while.
We now have three choises. We can keep using the current headers or someone reverse-engineers the information again and licenses it under GPL or we can reverse-engineer the BSD headers. I don't see why it would be impossible to reverse-engineer opensourced code/programs, it is even a bit easier than binary only code.
- Raynet --> .
Microsoft has incorporated BSOD code into Windows various times.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, you don't.
and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment.
No, you can't.
I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
Broad statement. Incorrect. IBM and HP back/develop Linux, Dell sells Linux servers, etc, etc. The Gartner Group just recommended against using IIS. Cobalt and RedHat hardly failed as "Linux startups." Most linux code is portable in one way or another if its correctly written. Open Source has proven and will continue to prove that software should cost nothing. (Given that Mickeysoft doesn't accept liability, its essentially worthless.
I know that that's a strong statement to make,
No, its idiotic.
but I have evidence to back it up!
No, you don't.
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I recommended [SIC]the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and file serving.
So you went your own way and installed your own kernel, not using the default kernel or default kernel sources from a particular distribution. You failed to mention the distribution. High performance DNS is best outsourced for large companies try www.ultradns.com. You did no qualifying as 2.4.9 is fresh out of the ftp. The Gartner group recommended against the use of IIS, which owns a mere 25% of that market. 60% is apache. http://www.netcraft.com/survey/. Fileserving is trivial, and Linux offers a myriad of FS choices, XFS (SGI), JFS(IBM), Reiser, ext2, ext3, for various needs. From true logging/journaling to simple filesystems. Most of the time, Samba drastically outperforms NT/2000 boxes with the SMB protocol.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming.
You aren't. Delusion.
I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast.
Troll. C doesn't believe in making it easy for morons, sorry you were left out of the loop.
I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised [SIC] version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive...
GCC 3.1 isn't out yet. 3.01 is. The kernel documentation tell you to use EGCS 1.1.2 / GCC 2.91.66, but you can't read. I've had not problems with Linux 2.4.3 - 1.4.10 with gcc 3.00 or 3.01, nor with Mozilla 0.93/0.94, nor with any other things I have compiled with GCC on Linux. The processes will run without leaking for at least on the order of months. I had shells on Linux kernels that will run on the order of years. You are apparently I'll equipped to manage an enterprise Unix solution.
We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's [SIC] IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour [SIC] , we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Ximian, KDE 2.X are pretty hard to beat. Too much functionality for the basal minded. I've seen a 32MB piece of crap Cobalt box with Linux 2.2.16X survive quite a large beating. You used the wrong compiler to build the 2.4.9 kernel anyway. You probably didn't link /usr/include to the linux source tree. There is ReiserFS in the kernel, there are several distributions including journalled filesystems in them, XFS is offered with RedHat 7.1 via SGI. JFS is able to be put in. Reiser is already there. SMP support has been there since 2.2. You are wrong. The memory is far more protected than it is in Windows anything. I have never seen apache crash, nor BIND for that matter. Funny, your amateur ass stages servers for Fortune 500 companies on production boxes and then has to re-install Windows? Never was there a day where a Unix server could not do more with less hardware than Windows. Ever. Even Apple chimed into that idea.
Needless to say, I won't be recommending [SIC] Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed [SIC]that they won't be able to leverege [SIC]the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
Needless to say you cant spell. You don recommend anything to anyone, your delusions of grandeur are most amusing. If you want to pay for support, you can. RH support is quite good, actually. Given that you recompiled the kernel on a system with the wrong compiler and then whine about it, you complain about Linux? Shared source is not completely open, retard, its chunks of code. And for the complete source you have to shell out big cash. Most appliances run non-Microsoft Code.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
Linux is in academia because it is meritorious. Lotus Notes, Oracle, SAP are all ported to Linux, hardly "Hello World". It's a hobby to you, you clearly have to spend more time with it because you sir, are a complete and utter moron. Nick try on a troll.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I recall, for example, a murderer was caught, but was later found innocent because the glove didn't fit...
Yeah, let's look at the facts at *this* case please...
I'm sorry, I thought my intent would be clear from context. I wasn't attempting to offer anecdotal evidence; I was attempting to introduce reasonable doubt, by showing that there could plausibly be another explanation for the facts as we know them.
I was not attempting to argue that this alternative possibility was in fact true, merely that it existed.
-- MarkusQ
Check out the very first revisions of the Linux compatibility module in FreeBSD. It looks quite a lot like the NetBSD Linux compatibility module of the same vintage, which was written by Frank van der Linden and committed to the NetBSD source tree (which was the first public release of that code) -- yet all the files say Soren Schmidt at the top.. Amazing!
-- Jason R. Thorpe, NetBSD and FreSSH developer
You certainly do not expect to get fortune off of your open source code. The whole point of the open source license model is that it STAYS open source. So that if someone uses your code and improves it, you get to see what they did. Lawsuits are a convenient way to punish those who don't abide by the license stipulations. This so-called "infighting" is nothing more than the (proper) response to something designed to be free being stolen.
I agree: zealots in the Linux(and BSD) communities have always been a little highstrung. But their basis for zealotry hasn't been unfounded.
digitalunity
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Moderators: don't mod up stuff unless there is PROOF or this person has put a real name behind their statements.
e r when it's posted anonomyously.
You misunderstand the purpose of moderation.
Moderation is to call readers' attention to interesting/informative/funny/whatever POSTINGS, and make it easier for them to avoid redundant/trolling/whatever POSTINGS.
When someone choses to post under their ID they also gain karma if they're moderated up. If they have a preponderance of stuff others want to see eventually their karma gives them an automatic bonus point, to bring their stuff to your attention more quickly. (Similarly, anonymous postings are less likely to be of interet / more likely to be obnoxious, so they start out with a one-point penalty.)
But that doesn't make a particular posting any more or less interesting/informative/redundant/trolling/whatev
So moderators SHOULD moderate anonymous postings up or down, as appropriate.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First of all, the two codes look familiar one to another, no doubt 'bout that. So I guess it's up to the Redhad guys that hacked that part of the kernel to add the copyright and maybe make some public apologies. ;)
I guess that is the least they can do.
Second thing is that déja vu's are very dangerous...
It means that something has been changed inside the Matrix. We have to check if backdoors have been made in the kernel in that glimpse of a fragment of that second Søren Schmidt saw the theft.
42 + 1 = 42
Yeah, what's new? Compare the PPTPd (PoPToP) RPM, which provides a SPEC-file diff like:
- Some other guy packaged this
+ we packaged this
And that's it. No Thanks, Mr We-just-lifted-your-work for all the effort, no mention of anyone else. Did anyone ever think that this kind of petty theft - of SPECs - wouldn't escalate into an all-out IP Theft case?
I am not actually stating this, but I wonder what you think about the argument that since it was reverse engineered intellectual property, that the one doing the reverse engineering didn't "create" the IP, but rather unobscured it? Then one could argue that he/she wouldn't need to be credited.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Same bits/bytes layed out in the same order on the hardware will/should lead to same/similar structs in memory. That assumes that the granularity of each component is either implicit or defined explicitly (ie. you can mask and chop 4 bytes or one int - same result when written out).
That said, the inclusion of that comment and the identicle white-space would, if submitted to me for marking in DRIVERS101 would lead to an instant fail and suspension of commit rights.
This is almost certainly a simple error. The files in the example were obviously chosen for shock value.
They're just a couple of data structures. you have to give the elements meaningful names, and there arent many choices.
Im sure the attrib will be fixed. Now, lets not infight and get on with developing two decent Open Source OSes.
But I thought it was a news site... now I'm confused! ACK!
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
It's not verbatum, now is it? Personally, I'm a bit split on this. If the few people on slashdot that actually programmed looked upon this code, particularly those with experience in reverse-engineering, I'm sure they could tell you that, in the process of such an act, despite the PERL cheer otherwise, one tends to have a similarly structured code.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Congrats Nik, Nice job on hurting FreeBSD. We will see where the so called IP borrowing leads to in the near future. Specifically things like 48-bit LBA, MMIO VirtualDMA under taskfile rules, Mt Rainier GAA decoding and DeIcing, and the new Ultra133. The real kicker will be when I publish the correct and legal headers w/ Linux ATA Development and Promise Copyrights and GPL and require that usage of the information carry the copyrights and terms of usage. This will also include a set of headers for HighPoint, and Silicon Image (formerly CMD). Since I know for a fact that FreeBSD can not do CMD RAID, nor has it heard about it. I am only here to validate your child-like response, as a future reference point to enjoy you choking down the crow you are spreading. I have no issues with Soren (mispelled sorry), but your mistakes will have a price. I hope you feel really good about yourself, because you are a big man. Only because you wanted to thumb us, the Linux Community, in the eye, is the reason you thought it would be useful to paint the world a bloody gaping pie-hole. I really hope you enjoy your time of glory and fame, because you have failed to address my request to clear my name from the issues. A price that would have been cheap pay earlier but, not affordable now. For now it is time to take FreeBSD and all the other variations of BSD to school, watch learn and I will require that my work and my IP be acknowledged in all of these from now on out. I understand that this may prevent you from ever having support and access to some really cool stuff coming down the pipes, because of the License you will be require to acknowledge where and who you are borrowing IP. Please have a good day. Respectfully, Andre Hedrick Linux ATA Development
Its the BSD license that has allowed M$ to steal TCP/IP and kebrose (to name only two that started on BSD) if Microsoft had incorporated this new ATA code into XP it would be ok because they don't redistribute the source code. Linux is being held to a higher standard because it includes the source. Funny how that works with BSD.
Has the time come to stop using the BSD license and support the GNU?
BSD=code for free and Bill Gates gets to keep it.
GNU=code for free and screw Bill Gates.
While I agree that if BSD code by Schmidt was used he should be credited but I would like to appeal to Schmidt to use the GNU and stop the bigger problem.
"recommended" is correct.
optimised [SIC]
"optimised" is also correct.
behaviour [SIC]
As is "behaviour".
The last two are British variants ("behaviour" is also common here in Canada, and I believe "optimised" would be considered the official spelling here, though I've never seen it.) I don't know what you were thinking with "recommended".
Microsft's [SIC]
This is, yes, a typo. Gasp.
recommending [SIC]
See "recommended".
dissappointed [SIC]
Possibly a typo, possibly a genuine spelling mistake. Either way, you only have a 1 in 3 hit rate. Combined with the fact that you made some truly bizarre misspellings - such as "I'll" for "ill" and "Nick try" - and I would say you just shot yourself in the foot nicely.
Why exactly did you think that flaming the spelling would add to your argument, when there was so much demented ranting about the use of Basic in systems programming and the volunteer status of Apache to pick on? And having decided to flame the spelling, why didn't you take the time to run your assumptions through a spell-checker? (I used www.m-w.com.) "recommended" doesn't even have any variant spellings to confuse you - what were you thinking?
If the issue had been much less clear-cut, that bit of dumb-ass grandstanding might have cost you the argument. You're lucky you were replying to such a flake. If this had been posted on sci.math instead of Slashdot, it would have contained the phrase, "I consider myself to be very mathematically inclined having worked with elementary algebra for the last 8 years proving Fermat's Last Theorem."
Joe
The Linux-IDE site has already been mentioned, but I thought it interesting to point out a particular part of it that hasn't been mentioned. This also follows up some of the "don't download 2.4.10 until proper credit is given" whiners.
;)
check out patch-to-2.4.10
Try these few lines:
+++ linux2410/drivers/ide/hptraid.h Mon Sep 24 10:35:39 2001
@@ -1,4 +1,32 @@
-
+/*-
+ * Copyright (c) 2000,2001 Søren Schmidt
+ * All rights reserved.
...and also...
+++ linux2410/drivers/ide/pdcraid.c Mon Sep 24 10:37:13 2001
@@ -12,9 +12,7 @@
Authors: Arjan van de Ven
-
-
-
+ Based on work done by Søren Schmidt for FreeBSD
That's good enough for me, plus, the timestamp on the patch file is Sept 24.
Does anyone read patch files anymore?
TiFox
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Soren says he didn't invent those data structures... he reverse-engineered them.
Seems to me that reverse-engineered information isn't exactly the intellectual property of the reversing engineer. Sure, he spent some time figuring out what someone else had done but the real IP is the work of the original implementing engineer.
Keep in mind that many user license agreements prohibit reverse-engineering, portraying that act as IP theft...
"There is no honor among thieves."
He's not the CEO anymore, but he's still chairman of the board and chief software architect.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Hold on now, there is absolutely no reason to go and turn this into another Canada bashing discussion. Stupid American.
(Modified a bit because the comments.pl on slashdot would crib about some junk chars)
It is clear that BSD is going off the deep end.
Linux ATA Development has a Legal signed NDA for the proper development of
the complete and correct FastTrak(tm) open sources driver.
I will soon publish the complete header codes in a original header w/
a Linux ATA Development Copyright and Promise Technologies Copyright.
The driver will have a GPL statement be issued in the headers and source
files to prevent the usage in BSDish environments. I have not tolerance
for being labled a thief.
I will prove the point that Linux does not "STEAL IP", then watch BSD
"borrow" from Linux. Just like we will watch 48-BIT Addressing be
borrowed without credit. Just like we will watch the new Ultra133 drivers
be borrowed without credit. BSD has no legal documentation to develop
these changes or access to hardware. We will watch and prove where IP
comes from in the world of storage.
Ever noticed how Linux had Ultra100 support 10 minutes after the release
of public information on June 5, 2000 8:00am PDT?
For now the Linux Open Source drivers for SoftRAID need to go away.
Not to worry they will return in full swing.
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 11:32:52 -0800
From: ---deleted---
To: Andre Hedrick
Subject: RE: Research FastTrak66 Ultra ATA/66
Hi Andre,
Very interesting work, I can't guess how you did it. Here is our beta
driver for the Fasttrak. This is the one I told you about. It uses our Raid
engine (engine3.a). Sorry, but as I mentioned there is no possibility of us
releasing the source code for this. However you can get a good idea of how
the engine works by viewing our driver source. Please do not distribute
this driver or the engine binary to anyone. I've included some quick
documentation too, I remember there is one step missing but it is obvious.
begin 600 FT03.TGZ
<BIG SNIP>
end
Here is the proof that I could have done this long before the BSD folks
had a clue about soft raid engines wrt addon cards.
Regards,
Andre Hedrick
People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they did yesterday.
"The problem here is that the structures in the headers is the whole story. That info tells how you read the proprietary struct off the disks, and was reverse engineered and documented by me after a lot of effort." Søren's intellectual property is tied up in those files.
</snip>
Whose intellectual property is the outcome of a reverse engineering process really?
--
jonmartin.solaas@mail.link.no
<paranoia>
Check the guy for a history of GPL advocacy:-).
</paranoia>
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
I haven't heard copyright called that for a looong time.
Take a look here:
i nu x.kernel.Pine.LNX.4.10.10012292247350.15613-100000 %40master.linux-ide.org&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D andre%2Bpromise%2Bata%2Bbsd%26hl%3Den%26group%3Dml ist.linux.kernel%26rnum%3D1%26selm%3Dlinux.kernel. Pine.LNX.4.10.10012292247350.15613-100000%2540mast er.linux-ide.org
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=l
..."It is my understanding that he got all of the info on how Highpoint lays out the geometry of the array directly from Highpoint, and that they were "very forthcoming" with whateveri nformation that the FreeBSD team asked for."
This was December last year..
I'm very dissapointed that this wasn't simply solved by a mail from S. Schmidt to Linus Torvalds or Andre Hedrick -- look at all the bad press you've made; for BSD, for Linux and - for Open Source.
:(
Slashdot should update this on the home page to reflect this was fixed already!
assertion: a positive statement, usually made without an attempt at furnishing evidence
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that the above copyright notice, this permission notice and the following insult appear in supporting documentation. This software is supplied as is without expressed or implied warranties of any kind. Bill Gates sucks cock.
The headers just include information about structs and some magic values. I am sure the ATA specifications contain exactly the same information. Now it's known for sure that the driver source code itself is different, and so is its object code.
It could also happen that both the BSD header and the Linux header copied either the ideas or the implementation from the original ATA specs (I'm not acquainted with them, so I can't tell to what degree that is possible).
And finally, we come again to the question what qualifies as IP. The data itself (structs and magic) was publicly available. Therefore the Linux code author may simply claim that he invented the name for the struct fields himself (or that they appear so in the ATA documentation), and so this code was re-written independently, obviously violating no one's IP.
Hi, I just noticed a post on the linux-kernel mailing list from Andre Hendrick regarding this. It appears that the "Linux ATA Development has a legal signed NDA for the proper development of the complete and correct FastTrak(tm) open sources driver."
He even got a e-mail from FastTrak which included the beta binary driver, back in November 1999.
Odd. (The relavent e-mail should be here by tomorrow).
That seems easier than Vim's set digraphs option.
How would you type a literal "/o" if you needed it with this option set?
All I wanted was a rock to wind a piece of string around, and I ended up with the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
BSD is not dying. The KAME IPv6 stack, as integrated into BSD OS's, for prima facie example, is the reference for how all other OS will implement IPv6. BSD is already (and always has been) as dead as it is going to get: note the sarcasm.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I did nothing so I have nothing to be sorry about; however, I have now put forward a solution to remove the problem and will make it very pointed when the Legal IP I have requested form Promise shows up in FreeBSD.
Since you have no knowledge of the whole issues at hand, I should expect mistakes of this nature on your behalf.
Regards,
Andre Hedrick
Linux ATA Development
http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.4/patch/patch-2.4 .6-ac1/linux.ac_drivers_ide_hptraid.h.html
I was merely explaining the extent to which an assembly programmer could go. In reality, all they would want to do is LOOK at the code and see if they find any GPLed software.
... the next company would think twice about illegially using GPLed code. In fact, the programer who's FreeBSD code was plagarized by a RedHat programmer, would have a strong case against RedHat and could make some money on it.
Despite what has been happening, it would be perfectly reasonable to sue a GPL infringer for large ammounts of money, and I suspect that is what will happen if any GPLed code is EVER found in ANY microsoft product (illegially).
Just think, if some major company got sued for GPL violations, and it cost them $100,000
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, the author released it under a BSD clause that said his copyright info must be kept with the code and not modified. That's what all this hoopla is about, not the acutal use of the code, but the use of the code without proper credit to the author.
man RTFM
No manual entry for RTFM.
No proof? Where have you been living the past five years? Holy crap. I guess you could start with the courts "findings of fact" in the antitrust trial, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. What short memories people have. I guess you didn't read about the multiple times MS has been caught with fake grass-roots support campaigns, fake letters-to-the-editor etc. Or about the times MS has been caught writing code into their OS that either breaks competing companies programs or makes them look bad. Or about the times they've been caught buying "independent reviews". Or copying innovations from other companies and openly claiming that they were MS's innovations. Or when they attempted to "embrace and extend" Java. I guess you never noticed the "halloween document" either. Or the dirty licensing tricks they pulled with the SMB/Kerberos documents. Or when they were caught "cooking the books" in an attempt to smooth their apparent revenue growth, and fired one of their top accountants when he threatened to expose them. Or when they lied about hotmail finally having been converted to run ONLY on NT. Or when they stabbed IBM in the back after pretending be collaboratively developing OS/2. Or when they gave "discounts" to OEMs in exchange for enforcing monopolistic distribution of only Windows and no competing OSs, to the point where it was impossible at the majority of major computer vendors to even buy a PC without buying Windows. Or when there was a, uh, "bug" in IE that displayed a message box encouraging people to switch to ISPs that used Microsoft technology. Or donating computers to Universities in exchange for having the Universitys ONLY teach Microsoft software in their courses. Or when they were caught with Windows Update unknowingly sending personal information back to Microsoft (something that would be illegal in my country), and then claimed that although they had a database they "werent doing anything with it". Or when they were caught having Microsoft Word save identifying information into Word documents, which they then claimed was a "bug". The list goes on. Clearly YOU need to inform yourself. How many dirty tricks can *you* name that the Linux community has attempted to pull over the past ten years?
It amazes me how people are so willing to just "look the other way" and pretend these things don't happen, I presume just for the convenience of using Windows.
About 1/3 of the way into the shouted part, you wrote:
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
Shouldn't that be "THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR CONTRIBUTORS"?
Lameness filter disclaimer: I know that the netiquette standards consider all capital letters to be lame, but the law requires disclaimers of warranty and limitations of liability to be "prominent," and the easiest way to do this in plain text is to write them in all caps.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is actually "sweet zombie jesus"
-- http://www.camulus.org/