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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.
Microsoft has incorporated BSD code into Windows various times, each time giving proper credit and keeping copyright notices intact.
Don't try to reflect this onto Microsoft. Clearly the Linux developers fucked up here.
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!".
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
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.
I think it was more of a matter of lazy programming than evil intentions. The header files define structures, a few constants, etc. They encode a bit of knowledge, such as data formats and the meaning of that data, but some people wouldn't consider it code. More of an interface description. Of course, if it was a document describing an interface, then most people would automatically consider the copyright to hold...
It's a bit like other forms of online "theft". Some folks think that if you download the html for a popular site, remove all the text and images, and use the layout on their own site, then it's not theft, because the copyrightable parts (images, text) were removed, and only the framework retained. But, like HTML framework, headers are the work of the programmer, and any desired copyright should be respected.
Again, I'm in the "simple mistake, fix it, move on" camp, and would like to add that Red Hat and the rest should add a line to their policy about reusing "open source" code, to retain copyrights.
If Microsoft did it, I'd expect them to do the same, but Microsoft would probably do it to force the issue, make the EFF take them to trial to define the limits of open source, the BSD liscence , and the GPL liscense. That's the difference - this will be taken care of by peers, while Microsoft conflicts almost always involve lawyers. It's the difference between getting rear-ended by an honest citizen (with or without the insurance companies getting involved), vs. an asshole celebrity who thinks the little people should take their licks and not annoy the "important people" with trivial matters like car bills and possible medical expenses.
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
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.
This is clearly the fault of just one PROGRAMMER.
Does your boss see all the code you write, and if s/he did would s/he recognize BSD ATA code? Mine sure wouldn't.
I don't know about Windows 2000, but I've got RTM Windows XP here. On the CD in the root directory is a README file. Here's some of it...