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Fink Maintainer Steps Down Due To GPL Infringment
DShadow noted that
the Fink maintainer Christoph Pfisterer has resigned
largely because of GPL violations by openosx and macgimp, as well as macosx.forked.net.
There's definitely some tension between the mac world and the Open Source and GPL worlds. Certain amounts of culture clash are inevitable, but hopefully great projects like this will continue, and commercial vendors will be able to play nice without alienating developers. The good news for Macheads is that fink will continue just fine.
The message by Christoph Pfisterer when he resigned is something that I think anyone working on a project feels. Even for you slashdotters who don't always read the articles, read the email. Damn users who think they own you.
I wish him luck in his future dealings:)
the gpl's there for a reason - it's a community effort and you can't take from the community and not give back. i don't think resignation's the answer - how about fixing some of the problems instead? if you exit the game, you loose by default - keep playing!
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
It would be perfectly legal for me to grab a copy of the Linux source code, rip out all the credits as to who did what work, and release my new OS "Brianux". This would be reprehensible (and for the record, I have no intention of actually doing this, so save your flames)- but perfectly legal so long as I released the source.
If we were to steal their code we would most likely give them credit. They will not allow this, but they will still ours without giving credit to us. What a double standard...
FearLinux.com
you're DoSing websites because they're violating the GPL? how old are you? 12, 13 at most? grow up please, DOS are NOT the way to go
BTW, being a long-time Mac user myself, I'm totally clueless to how these kinds of open source issues are worked out, but I am curious about it. These kinds of issues can't be new. Can any of you more acquainted with this topic offer any sort of precedent for these kinds of issues/disputes?
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Before anyone starts bashing the macosx.forked.net guys, let's keep a few things in mind:
1) There's nothing wrong with charging for access to files. You pay your ISP, right?
2) Apex *is*, apparently, working to comply with the GPL. From what I've read in the past on his site, he works in the commercial fishing industry up in Alaska. I would imagine that his time to work on the site and the packages is limited.
3) Apex has been very helpful in the past on the forums hosted on his server. Lots of people have requested ports of software (some of which are difficult) and he has come through for them.
Chris
Ok, I read through the supplemental information and his attitute to the first guy posting to Sourceforge just seemed wrong. Not knowing this guy, he seems very abrasive and doesn't understand that not everyone is a freaking computer genious. Yes, people who don't read the manuals are annoying, but when you YELL at someone you are turning them off big time. Especially when it seems that the guy just downloaded an old version of mysql and there seems to be no indication that the new version is required. It really comes down to the fact I can't get over HIS USE OF SHOUTING in what seemed to be a normal civilized support request.
Pbur
Don't feed the trolls, please. Thank you, drive through.
They won't be distributing software illegally, I can tell you that! Come on, who's with me?? T - 10 minutes.
this fink maintainer (Christoph Pfisterer) really does need to get off the project, and onto some valium. reading the threads he posted after his rant one gets the impression that he is on a permanent caffeine-stress-hairtrigger high. jeez.
The email exchange between him and the supposed gpl violators is a hoot. The very first response Christoph got from the company was "did we screw up? tell us how to give proper credit," and Christoph then proceeds to continue bashing and raving.
It really sounds like christoph needs a major vacation, the stress seems to be breaking him. I don't know any of the people/orgs involved, but just read his rant and the links he posted at the bottom.
Situations like this underscore the real strength (and weakness) of the GPL. The strength is that the GPL has worked so far without any large-scale legal challenge. There's a strong social understanding that comes with GPL'ed code, that you give back to the community from which you've taken.
The weakness is that the GPL would probably lose in court, to some degree. This is because copyright law and, in many ways, the legal system, in the US and elsewhere, were never designed to work in accordance with the common good, especially when it comes to issues of property, and even moreso when it comes to the issues of intellectual property (really just an illusion of modern society).
Therefore, when approaching breaches of the GPL, it's probably in our best interest, as a community, to not immediately threaten legal repurcussions, but instead work on other ways to pressure entities to abide by our community's standards.
Any entity that uses GPL'ed code in bad faith ultimately will recieve a pretty bad reputation in the growing free software community. Also, if they're not willing to abide by our rules, what says that we should abide by theirs? For instance, if Microsoft rolls a bunch of GPL'd code into a new product, then we retain an ethical (if not legal) right to distribute the resulting binary of that product as much as we'd like.
I didn't intend this post to be as long as it is, but basically, think about this: Do we see free software as a phenomenon? Something that just happened? Or as a movement? Something that we all made happen? If it's a phenomenon, then the best we can hope for is that the GPL sticks, on a legal basis. If it's a movement, then we're going to have to be prepared to come together and face challenges. So far, although a lot of us haven't acknowledged it, we've functioned as a movement, and we've been very successful. Witness the FUD that Microsoft used to spread about Linux. Our responses to that FUD ended up making MS look more like sore losers than better producers.
Also consider that it's possible the struggle for collectively owned information and intellectual property may some day move far outside of the internet, and into the real world. That might require a whole new re-evaluation of our tactics and ideals.
Okay, enough ranting.
It looks like Chistopher is complaining about a few points, to which Jeshua replies and proves Chistopher wrong (i.e. "No where I have I taken credit for porting the software. Where is the word 'ported' mentioned?").
I guess I miss Chistopher's argument, as Jeshua pretty much set him straight. Jeshua is also right. Chistopher knows nothing about Jeshua. Jeshua could be a huge OSS contributer in a bunch of other projects.
Sounds like Chistopher is a crybaby and doesn't felt he got his way for some reason, so now he's quitting.
If that's not it, what'd I miss?
I understand that this guy is working for free, But if you are not prepared to deal with users who need some help, why in the hell are you developing end-user software? I work as a developer, and idiotic questions make up about 20% of my average day. Read some of the email exchanges with openosx, and with users on sourceforge, and you may come away with the same impression I did, mainly that this dude has a real short fuse and nasty temper. Remember, he VOLUNTEERED to do this project, nobody was forcing it on him. If he doesn't like it, go start another project, or find a cushy commercial position (he's obviously talented enough to get paid some real money).
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
The majority of this guy's decision to resign actually sounds like he's tired of dealing with what shareware and freeware authors have been dealing with for years, with only the good will of people to get any compensation or credit (most shareware on the Mac is not time-limited). The Mac community does have a high standard for software performance and does expect polish from its programmers.
It results in a fair amount of whinery, but it sounds like this guy is going to be shocked when he finds that users in the professional world will be just as nasty, plus they'll threaten to withhold payment.
The e-mail exchange didn't impress me a lot either--it sounded like he had one or two points that the guy was willing to concede on, but he blew up and brought other things into the mix for a flame-o-rama.
So I'm sorry that he's no longer a Mac developer, and I'd encourage him to put his studies first. On the other hand, I'm not going to get too worried about the nature of the Mac community over it.
So many maintainers of various projects have "resigned", but many of those have quietly returned to the projects after a short hiatus.
This freak will be back and answering support requests. He may not like it, but like others before him, he needs it.
Sounds more like just plain tired than GPL violations, but then I'm not a slashdot media spinner.
Christoph deserves a great big THANKS from the world of computer users. I have worked on similar ports to other processors and it is mind numbing tedious work that stretches to the horizon and beyond. Every day you know that you will spend it fixing bugs in a dozen programs, bugs that will range from the trivial to the near impossible to find.
You do not plan and execute your plan as in the development of a program. You work your way down the list of unwashed packages, build them, test them, fix them and check them off only to find more packages added to the list than you checked off that day. Most of the packages you won't give a rat's ass about, but you do them because someone, somewhere will be wanting it.
Take a break Christoph. Get caught up in school, then when that itch returns create another wonderful thing.
There's certainly some clashing between the Mac and Unix worlds (the iTunes installer issue was probably caused by that kind of mutual ignorance) but Apple and proprietary developers have generally gotten along well with the BSD and gcc people as far as license issues go.
The problems described here don't strike me as being a Mac vs free software conflict. They sound a lot more like the stuff Linux developers have been dealing with for the last few years -- LinuxOne-style abuse of redistribution and self-absorbed users who think that because you gave them something you work for them.
If this project is to continue, everyone involved has to respect the ground rules. when you begin something like this, there is roughly a 50/50 chance of it working or going insane and this just shows how vulnerable the open source world is.
anyways, i hope Fink keeps going beacuse it hase huge potential and its the main reason I bought OSX.
Man and Goat
Christoph Pfisterer seems like quite the weenie from his email exchange. OpenOSX is just trying to make things easier for people. It's not like they've gone out of their way to anonomize Fink and change its name.
Are the creators of RPMs forced to give credit to the writers of bash or csh because their programs use these languages to run post/preinstall scripts? Of course not. If you're just using a program to install another program, and the installer program is based on the GPL, don't be expecting to get damn credits all over the packaging.
In the email exchange posted by Christoph Pfisterer (no less), Josha looks like he's being quite reasonable and that it's actually Christoph Pfisterer being a pillock.
Personally, I'm sad to see him go, but hope he'll be back eventually. I understand his frustration with the "community" but hope he notices all of us who forgot to say how much we appreciated his work before he left.
I think I'm gonna' make a bumper sticker: "Have you hugged an Open Source Programmer today?"
Sounds like something I read recently:
o uk ov/
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezr
(section: "Cult of Personality, burnout of the leader")
As a maintainer of my own growing project on sourceforge I often emphathize with the items listed in this paper. Some people have a tendency to put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves. When this happens you naturally become very defensive and intolerant. This is probably lessened when you have a strong core group.
Time to take a vacation.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
IANAL, but it seems to me an "appropriate copyright notice" refers to some copyright stament made by the author. If you write something, you've got copyright, GPL'ed or not. The way you exercise that copyright is what licenses are all about.
//---
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
-= snip =-
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Over the last two days, I've set up a couple of new Macs at work, and used Fink to throw all the extra goodies that I needed on. Ever since I started playing with it around 0.20 time, I've found the whole distribution to be wonderful.
I really meant to post a "thank you" note at some point. I wish I had. I can't possibly account for how much time the Fink people have saved me.
OK - from reading the background material, I think that Christoph has made some dubious assumptions about people at times, and attacked people a little too eagerly - but these are really just symptoms of someone working way too hard for too little reward. I get like that at work sometimes.
How about we all take a little bit of time today to send out a simple "thanks" email to one person involved with one piece of free software that you use regularly. It'll only take a minute or so, and may just keep that person feeling good enough about doing what they're doing that they'll keep on doing it.
Just go and do it now. Slashdot will still be here when you get back.
Wasting your time since 1997.
I dont know all of the specifics, but by reading through the supporting materials listed by Christoph Pfisterer in his resignation, it seems to me that he has at many points actively engaged in flaming people on the various support boards for their ignorance.. sure its not all him, but he's doing just as much flaming as any of the people he's complaining about..
miss this page:
http://www.openosx.com/kudos3.html
Sorry if this is ignorant, as I'm not a Mac guy, but what is the purpose of Fink? It seems like it's a means of porting UNIX apps to OS X?
But isn't OS X BSD UNIX itself? Just with a nice GUI, some additional APIs and some compatibility/API layers for MacOS apps, lying on top of the BSD UNIX subsystem/MACH kernel?
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
> There's definitely some tension between the mac
> world and the Open Source and GPL worlds.
THAT'S kind of a "carpet-bombing" kind of statement, given the fact that it's the former head of Fink vs. two now-companies.
> * Tired of people that complain about bugs but won't help fix
There was a person on Linux Weekly News recently complaining that people wouldn't report bugs on his package. This is part of the reason why. I run across several bugs where I don't have the time or interest to deeply investigate. I can try to make a quick and clear bugreport, but why bother if all I'm going to get is crap for it, or it's just going to get ignored?
There is no evidence of any real GPL infringement here. I urge SlashDot readers, especially the kneejerk "GPL good, Apple bad" crowd, to read the conversations at the indicated links and make up their own minds:
1) OpenOSX appears to be distributing source code on their CDs, and now gives credit to fink on the MacGIMP CD web page.
2) Macosx.forked.net has also posted credit to fink on the home page web site, as well as indicating their intention to address GPL issues.
Apparently Pfisterer is irritated in part because they were slow to give fink credit; but as others have pointed out, that's not a GPL violation.
Following the other links he includes in his "resignation letter" suggests that he's quick to get irritated -- especially when people point this out to him (cf. the "abiword" thread). Perhaps there are other things going on in his life, and this isn't a good time for him to lead an open-source project. Fine. Kudos to him for leaving his ball behind instead of taking it with him.
But the article title ("Fink Maintainer Steps Down Due To GPL Infringment") is misleading at best. Even Pfisterer didn't make this claim.
I would not presume to have the knoweledge to fix all the problems he has identified in the 'Give for free, everyone benifits' proccess.
But it is something that most of us believe in for our own reasons. And becouse of that I would suggest that maybe developers need more positive reinforcement in what they do. Most of us (me included) only think to give feedback when we want something more or we think they are doing something badly.
What about when we agree with what they are doing or when they are doing something well?
You have to admit that when everything you see in hear about what you are doing is negative, you gain negative feelings about what you are doing.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Ok, mostly OT, but its an apple thread, right? :) Anyhoo, was talkin to one of the girls I work with last night, and she mentioned that MS Office for OSX comes out today (I think). It dawned on me that OSX has a BSD core. Does anyone know if/what possibilities exist for Office to run on a unix core (ala *BSD/Linux)? The thought crossed my mind, and I had to ask. Anyone got any links or anything of valuable info regarding this topic?
In his funny email exchange this guy claims that the violation is the same as if someone took RedHat and repacked it without giving RedHat credit.
He misses the point that that is FINE. In fact, mandrake did that for a while, with a few changes.
The GPL means you can copy, rename etc as long as you contribute the source back, and make sure copyright in the source is accurate.
He needs to get a grip.
The website Wayback Machine allows you to see the way website looked in the past. For example:
macosx.forked.net in September or
slashdot.org from 1998.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
THANK ME, THANK ME VERY MUCH!
Come on people, if you want fame and fortune the future is in plastics.
Just the other day I was commenting how Slashdot stories regarding Apple *always* uses a negative slant.
:)
Well color me wrong, just a day later. An article having to do with the world of the Macintosh and narry a snide remark to be found in the lead-in.
I'm stupified. But pleased.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I don't think that it is true that...
"There's definitely some tension between the mac world and the Open Source and GPL worlds. Certain amounts of culture clash are inevitable, but hopefully great projects like this will continue, and commercial vendors will be able to play nice without alienating developers."
The Mac has been an excellent environment for hacking around. Apple has always been the brave alternative for more free-thinking computer users than IBM-PCs and 'nix boxen. It wasn't about the source code then, but it was definetly a matter of integrity. There isn't a culture clash taking place, Fink's maintainer was simply overworked and too posessive of his changes. I think he's more than a bit arrogant and if you take the time to read his stuff I imagine that you'll agree. He didn't _write_ the programs he's porting and he's generally not helping their developers port it (which, IMHO is the correct and standard way to port an Open Source app)!
Apple should be recognized and praised for releasing Darwin as Open Source. In olden times source code was prized as a resource because you could share it, learn from it, extend it, appreciate it, etc not because of a highly politicized IP philosophy. The GPL does not define Open Source software! If you write code and truly want to share it then do so! Truly respectable developers will credit you appropriately. But, Fink's maintainer is over-estimating his due praise!
"Your question can be answered by looking through documentation and simple investigation. I suggest you figure out the answer for yourself as this is a good habit to have. Here [href to docs or page] is a good place to start looking for how to solve your problem. I could give you the answer but it's better for you to be able to give it to yourself. Thanks."
I've seen the stress of IT support when that was my job. It didn't affect me much but co-workers constantly needed to vent about it. I couldn't imagine how bad it would have been if they weren't paid for it, and Chris wasn't.
In his email, he mentions releasing, say, Red Hat Linux with a few changes and no mention of RH, which would be okay. Not nice, but okay.
Can anyone point out the GPL violation, or is this another Slashdot fuckup?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Eh, let him resign. Who needs crybabies?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
because linux / bsd users have robbed them of their martyr-like counterculture image, which was a corporate created sham to begin with.
Get a life.
The GPL license offers a very beautiful dream, free, unrestricted access to software for the people of the world. No doubt this would be great, free technology for people in the third world countries (including me) and no more gigantic monopolistic companies telling you where to go today. I also believed in that dream, however I tried FreeBSD because I wanted to see how the traditional UNIX was. I could have tried NetBSD but I simply had a contact with FreeBSD first. FreeBSD has only one distribution and, of course, includes many GPL'd programs, something that shows without doubt that BSD hackers don't "hate" the GPL as a general rule, in fact, there is a sense of respect towards of the code written by the FSF and any comment against the GPL starts a never ending flame war in the lists.
:), and I am not going to analyze the answers RMS gave because that is not the objective of this article. I arrived, however, to two important conclusions:
I then decided to follow my ideals, and some years ago I pursued some email with Richard Stallman (RMS for short) on three issues:
1) The Free Software Foundation should support the efforts against crypto export restrictions in the US. It was suspected some linux distributions were exporting this code but there was no official statement on this.
He (RMS) agreed that such restrictions were against the spirit of free software redistribution. He included a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the Free Software Foundation's site.
2)During our email, he insisted I should use the term GNU/Linux, something that sounded perfectly logical although somewhat uncomfortable. I then asked if I could use the term GNU/FreeBSD and GNU/AIX (I used AIX with a complete GNU development system since those parts were unbundled by IBM) since I was using GNU components that were much bigger and equally important (at least to me) as the kernel.
RMS responded on both cases with a clear " no".
3) I commented that, given the FSF's objectives, FreeBSD was doing a better job than Linux.
He (and no doubt many readers) was surprised by this affirmation and asked for an explanation. I reasoned that since the objective behind the FSF was providing free software, and Linux was being heavily commercialized while FreeBSD was not, FreeBSD was nearer to the objectives. In those days, the newly born Caldera's distribution had a lot of commercial goodies and their base distribution couldn't be downloaded anywhere, I also commented that no one could stop the companies like Caldera from gradually replacing free parts of GNU/Linux with commercial elements until they would effectively replace the complete OS (I also mentioned the linux emulation in BSD in another context). To this final point, RMS responded that the only thing we could do was write more free software.
Nowadays I personally think that Richard Stallman is a good person but he is confused (I hope he thinks the same of me when he finishes reading this article
the GNU Public License will not save the world,
there shouldn't be a universal license; different situations require different licenses.
Jeshua Lacock is a fink, but he either does not know it or he does not care. It would seem he does not care, as he used "fink install". That makes him a rat to me. If there is a real GPL violation, we will hear of it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In the resignation link, Chris gives a few links to explain the resignation. The first one is an exchange with a person who signed the name 'avi'. Could this be The same as the Apple VP who is a complete _ASSHOLE_?
If so, I am understanding much better Chris's attitude...
What in God's name is a "Taco-snot" ? You people's website owner is emailing me about it. I wish he'd stop.
I can tell you for a fact that Apple representatives viewed the GIMP as a priority for porting to MacOS X early on, so I wouldn't be surprised (not a fact) if Apple provided some direct support for GIMP, not just Fink. And I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe found out and got even more p*ssed than they already were from MacOS X's PostScript-compatible Quartz interface stealing their revenue.
There are lots of "developers" out there that take other people's work and include it in their own project, without keeping the license and/or without giving due credit. This happens all the time.
/. That will get the infringement dealt with.
/. and by others on memepool and metafilter. I release it under a simple license: you may use it or distribute it as much as you like, as long as you don't charge, keep my copyright, the notice that I wrote it stays intact.
b b.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000140
The only way to police this -- and stop it -- is to go public with the problem. But that has it's own problem -- most no one will care about the problem.
Notice that Fink went public with these infringements 3 weeks ago.
It takes making the "public" is glaring away -- via a front page posting at
This will work for big projects like Fink. That means that little projects will get their work stolen from without any real means to fight back.
I know all too well.
I worked up what I consider a really clever kludge for blocking banner ads via the Proxy Auto Config mechanism built into Netscape (since 2.0) and IE (since 4.0). http://www.schooner.com/~loverso/no-ads/ I made this kludge right around Netscape 2.02, Spring 1996. (That was my JavaScript hacking days)
The PAC file I make available has been mentioned by me
I do this for the fun of it, after all.
Last year I read in the 5/28 "Gearhead" column in Network World Fusion where he talks about this a spyware blocking software. He mentions that it can also generate proxy auto config files to block web sites with ads.
Hmmmm, I think.
I download the software. Yup, there's my stuff inside his package. I go to the author's webpage. His documentation on Proxy Auto Config files turns out to be identical to the my documentation in my PAC file.
My copyright notice is gone. There is no mention that the PAC file was (originally) written by me. There is no indication the package in question contains works by anyone other than the author of the package.
I mentioned this in email to the author of the package. I mentioned this in his forum. I mentioned this to the author of the "Gearhead" column.
This person is still using my ideas, my code, and my documentation in his tool, and still isn't giving credit (or my copyright notice).
His attitude is: "I got it off some web site, so I can do whatever I want with it.".
Here's my post to his message board: http://www.morelerbe.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/ultimate
(psst: don't use his software: he's a plagerist!)
Thanks
well, the subject says it all!
You must provide a copy of the source code when you redistribute software that is under the GPL license. Forked.net and Openosx.com did not do this. Not only that, but they were both charging for the software that they basically just downloaded and repackaged.
Furthermore, i'm pretty sure both parties violated parts A, B, and C of section 2.
From the GPL
Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that there are a lot of Mac folks out there that haven't a clue about open source. It doesn't look like forked.net or openosx.com meant any harm, though. that they didn't mean any harm -- They just don't understand the GPL.
It looks like forked.net isn't charging for downloads anymore, and are trying to make it right. So it looks like it's all taken care of now.
the GPL violations of various folks was just one of the MANY reasons chrisp quit. I think it is jsut a little skewed to take this one aspect and say, "See, see! Apple has a problem with Open Source!!"
No, people, it was not Apple or Apple people. The problem came from THE COMMUNITY not from a corporation. And even so, it was only a part of the problem.
PLEASE read the letter and see for yourself that Mr. Malda is being pretty irresponsible with his journalistic integrity here.
Even the folks at apple for the most part dont have a clue about what the GPL says, some of the behind the scenes developers do but not anyone I dealt with. Apple modified several GPL applications for us in OSX and Darwin, I requested those changes, via the GPL written offer clause, it took an enormous amount of bitching and moaning to get them , then they asked me what I wanted them for before they would send em, I told them to offer them for download to other users that were having problems finding them, about 10 of us were on a 2 week hunt for some specific items, anyway APple told me "You cant do that" I went off, before they could finish their sentence I told them they better think VERY carefully about what they were saying, another thing was they said for them to provide me with the GPL apps, I had to agree to the Apple public Source liscence, this is what starte the hunt in the first place none of us thought it was right to agree to their liscencing to have to download the apps, round....and round....and round... Bugs the hell out of me I wrote code in some of those apps I was looking for ! I even offered to pay for the redist and media charges whatever they thought was fair, once again as per the GPL
Wind up of it was they told me since they provided a download even though you have to agree to the APSL to get to the area they were in compliance with the GPL, I informed them that is not sufficient as per the GPL FAQ on just that matter, at that point I suggested they reffer me to their legal dept. , they finally agreed to send me the requested source but after a 2 week battle, the fact that they had to burn me a special CD of GPL components that I didnt have to agree to the APSL liscence shows, normally some are bundled with the ADC stuff and some arent even avaliable for download !, that alone shows me they are out of compliance with the GPL.
Companies love to make money of the new GPL fad as they see it , get their bugs fixed and features added by the comunity at large but have a problem giving back, when they told me I couldnt offer the GPL apps for download I saw RED. Lets hope this is just due to the front lines at Apple being inexperience when it comes to GPL liscence issues and not the shape of things to come.
Are you trying to say that the Slashdot effect
is a deliberate DoS attack?
At least Slashdot can take what it dishes out, all
those people slashdot-ing what ever page you are
referring to were on slashdot not too long ago.
Heck, the slashdot team even preformed better than
the CNN weenies on 9/11.
Great job slashdot team! We thank you for your hard work, and the fact that you give it away for free.
let me get this straight, they develop a product to provide software for the Macintosh platform but expect their users to have a clue?
hello. McFly! Is anybody in there?!?
(and as his examples clearly show, this guy has PMS)
It sounds like this guy has a bit of an attitude problem. Okay it was a stupid post, but he didn't need to respond like that. It's not a good way to endear yourself to the users. Nowhere there did they expect him to be perfect, or 24hour support. They just asked some questions.
Don't get into free software developement if you are not prepared to answer stupid questions.
I hardly ever post comments to Slashdot, but this time I'm going to.
This article steps over the line and into libal. OpenOSX is not violating the GPL, it never was, and it wasnt even acused of doing so. What did happen is that Pfisterer thought that every redistributor who used Gimp and Frink should point out that he's responsable. Which may seam reasionable, but the problem is you have lots of contributors behind gimp, do they all get credits on the web page and promotional material? Or do you do what *every* other distribution does, and put the READMEs and CONTRIBUTORs files in the documentation and source.
Acusing OpenOSX of violating the GPL on a high trafic site like this is going to damage them a lot. How about an apology for publishing something that was flat wrong? its what I'd expect from a real news source.
What have OpenOSX done wrong? Sell open source software CDs at a high mark up, RedHat does that.
As a long time reader of Slashdot, I'm getting fed up of the Tabloid instincts being shown, and I'd like the Editorial Staff to Grow Up and show some Responsability.
I don't know what exactly is happening to the crowd on slashdot as I haven't been reading it much lately. However Christoph from what I read in the email exchange was genuinely trying to educate this guy on several different things. First and foremost he was trying to point out the way the GPL works. Secondly he was trying to help macosx or whoever those people are along the lines of not violating the GPL and or BSD. Thirdly all he was asking for was a little recognition, there are alot of installers for windows based machine that say "This installer uses blah" or "Wise Installer or whatever it is blah", the point is blantantly stealing someones code and making some tiny patches and distributing it publically deserves some credit even if it's not stated in the GPL; especially for money, it's called just covering your ass regardless. Last but not least he was trying to help the guy make stuff clear. How would you like if you went to buy a copy of "Said Program" and in the box there was an early access beta of the program but they didn't tell you? From what I can see Christoph is trying to save himself from a barrage of emails asking him to help fix something that he doesn't even know about. When the email discussion starts he clearly states that he found out through a third party. I don't know whether the third party was a developer, programmer or a bitching user. It's not fair to have to be subjected to some companies problems for support when they use your product and don't tell you.
All in all.. I'd have to side with Christoph.. as a developer and systems administrator I know the frustration that he's going through and it's not significantly burn out. It's releasing free code and supporting and at the same time dealing with people making money of your free work and time, not giving credit where it's due and then subjecting you to their customers barrage of email questions making money based off of your product. It's not fair; I use Mac OSX and I was going to purchase a couple of those cd's to save me some headache but I'll be goddamned if I support a company that doesn't support the authors they make a buck off, via code, recognition and/or money. The GPL wasn't meant to make developers sweat shop workers.
...fink? Guess the name is appropriate after the violations.
This Christoph sounds a whole lot another like Mosfet.
Read his posts - he flames the crap out of people that begin to piss him off. Yea, he might be an amazing developer, but all the talent and skills in the world won't get you very far if you are an irrational asshole.
Having worked customer service for the last 10 years, I have to make this comment. You should not be doing customer relations or customer service in any way shape or form. You simply cannot handle the stress...
It took me about 3 years to develop an attitude that didn't make me want to kick my cat or yell at people for cutting me off in a gas station after work.
If you can't take the stress of dealing with idiots and morons, you should not be a project leader/maintainer. Especially for Mac users! (Not a dig or a flame!) But they aren't known for their technical self-help-can-do attitudes. These folks are used to the = MacOS 9 and not a Unix based system like MacOSX. They are used to simple easy to use software and operating systems.
What I learned was the ability to not give a shit if I pleased these people. Don't get me wrong, I truly care to help people and do so every single day. But I always see the same idiots over and over calling me to walk them through the same exact procedure over the phone. Most of these guys/gals are a communications nightmare who can barely use a mouse and they don't know how to listen nor follow directions. We are talking about 3 hour phone calls to accomplish something that should only take 10min.
That said, I can relate to what you are going through. I've written over 300MB worth of web pages detailing all sorts of technical data and my own technical teammates still line up at my desk with questions that are answered in the documentation. Heck if the techs don't read it what makes you think the end users will?
However, it is a crime to just loose it with a customer. Even if that customer is not paying for your services (mine sure as hell aren't...). It was even worse that you publically did it in an open forum. Heck in a professional environment, if I am going to tear someone a new asshole, I take them into a private location where no one else can hear us and I let'em have it.
What you need to learn to do is to roll with the punches, dodge and weave to avoid the bullets, and still maintain an easy going attitude. I do not carry these frustrations around with me. I have learned to exercise extreme patience. If you cannot learn to do this, stay far far away from customer service positions.
I do the bare minimum for the idiots and morons but go the extra mile for the ones who are at least polite and pleasant. If an idiot happens to be at least pleasant and nice then they might get extra help.
Things you could have done:
1. Made an email template with RTFM and links to the FAQ, etc. in it. The latest versions that have been tested, etc. Just forward these automated responses to the idiots.
2. You could just ignore the morons, heck you are not making money on this. You don't need to email all of them. I am sure people like Linus ignore emails all the time.
3. Setup a survey to find out just how many users are actually happy with the Fink project. I bet they outnumber the ones who were pissing you off!
Commercial fishing in Alaska takes but a few months out of the year. it pays extremely well though.
What we have here is an ego conflict, and one guy whining about not getting credit. IMHO, OpenOSX has in no way violated the GPL -- If I remember correctly, the GPL does NOT make "giving credit to the original author" a manditory requirement of authorship. Sure, its a nice thing to do, but you're not obligated to do so. However, the GPL does make provision of the sourcecode upon request manditory, and OpenOSX has easilly exceeded this. They've bundled the source with the CD. No request necessary--its right there under your nose.
What happened here looks more like Fink's author had his feelings hurt when he realized people were using his work without giving him a pat on the head. Welcome to the open-source movement, Cristoph. Thats how it works. If you wanted to be assured of recieving some sort of acknowledgement of your efforts, you should have went with a BSD license, and not the GPL.
I might also add its terribly irresponsible (not to mention unprofessional) for Slashdot to assert that OpenOSX is guilty of GPL violations.
No, I don't use a Mac. I don't even have a stake in this whole argument.. I just don't like it when the facts are misrepresented. Read it for yourself.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
That pretty much summarizes the gap between theory and reality when it comes to enforcing legal rights. It's one thing to have a legal right. It's quite another thing to force people to respect that right.
And this is a practical matter that does not seem to occur to the "software wants to be free" crowd. You can impose all the "copylefts" and "artistic licenses" you want. But when the time comes to enforce your rules for distributing your software, you have to pay some very expensive professionals to make this happen. How are you going to do this if you software is not a source of revenue?
Fink may have been wronged by the other sites, but one site made amends and that chrisp dude is vindictive as hell. I'm sorry, but he was just plain rude to those people on the mailing list. I think he's about to go postal.
GNU Darwin is GNU'd too, but most of their base is actually the BSD ports system (no adv. clause). So..no more fink but there is GNU Darwin, what is the problem??
Coz he kept saying how tired he is.
Mac users are *much* more gay than this mac dude.
(Who is plenty gay himself. Who the fuck writes out all of Christopher.)
...if the REAL reason people bail on a project like this is due to an initially poor understanding of the true nature of humans.
Please read this before you mod me down ...
... they were quite happy selling boxes with closed software, just like every other computer maker at the time. Maybe it had a minor effect on people who wanted to work on open source software choosing different hardware.
The reason that the boycott was immature is that a boycott needs to be aimed at making things more difficult for the people who are doing the bad things, in order to discourage those bad actions.
Now who did this boycott actually inconvenience?
Not Apple
The people who were really affected were the Apple owners, not the company, in that we didn't have a good way out of the proprietary software (I used proprietary tools for many more years).
I had a Mac at the time, and wasn't too happy about the 'Look and Feel' lawsuit (wasn't happy about MicroSoft either) and one of my flatmates, knowing that I had a strong interest in compiler design, tried to get me interested in gcc and other free software. I was quite interested until I found out that 'oh, it won't run on your computer because there is a boycott', so I lost interest and put my energy elsewhere. I didn't have the resources to buy another machine just to do free software stuff, and doing a Mac port would have been a pretty big hurdle to start to use something.
The loss in this case was to me as an Apple owner, and to the Free Software movement, for whatever people like me didn't contribute.
For anyone planning a boycott, think through that you are actually aiming at the right target.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I took some time to read all of the links provided; the resignation letter and the links that came with it, the email correspondence with the packager of openosx, all of that. I'll probably get flamed for this, but I came away with a feeling that all the involved parties have serious maturity problems. One person takes another person's comments too seriously and blows up at them. One person takes a user's simple oversight and turns it into a haneous crime. chrisp and finyard in the bug tracker were just plain rude at times. Users ask dumb questions. We've all been on mailing lists and in the newsgroups. In fact we were all there at one point or another asking those same stupid questions. If people had flamed us with snide remarks, we would have probably said 'fsck this' and moved on to something else. There's no reason for chrisp to have been rude in the bug tracker, no matter how dumb of a question was asked. That's a responsibility that comes with being in a position such as that. All I can say to the parties involved is either grow up and be adults about this or meet out by the swing set at recess and settle it like the children you're acting like.
For the record before anyone replies to my message, I do understand the frustrations of chrisp. Dealing with stupid questions can quickly get on your nerves. Doing something with little to no credit also makes you question the worth of what you're doing. However if you do something good and you don't get public credit for it, you shouldn't doubt what you've done. You've already done it. If you doubt yourself after the fact when something doesn't go your way then it wasn't worth doing in the first place.
This points to the second component of the myth of open source (the first being that there large numbers of people out there capable of writing high quality software who will contribute to your project, which there are not). The idea that writing software, giving it away for free, and then dealing with all the crap is at all rewarding -- is absolute fantasy. Just look how frustrated and resentful Pfisterer became.
If open source "succeeds" the way some people want it to (i.e., it takes over the majority of software development), that will mean the only way anyone will ever get to program is in a situation like Pfisterer's. All software will be written by unpaid, naïve, and gullible volunteer students, doing everything in their spare time. Such people will only put in a few months or years worth of work, as they will get burned out after a very short time, just like Pfisterer.
Getting paid to write commercial software doesn't seem so evil when you consider that, does it?
I really agree with Chris' attitude towards these groups (or so called businesses). Most of them are creating a "hodge podge" effort at combining a few packages with the gimp, sticking it on a CD and then calling it "their product" and selling it!
One of the things that really irks me is that when I compiled (I won't say ported because it didn't involve any coding) the gimp and uploaded it to GNU-Darwin, it was available for those people who had the right dependencies to download from the GNU-Darwin ftp (under a contrib folder). But MacGIMP.org came along and listed it on versiontracker.com. Now what a stupid thing to do, it was like they were trying to get people to download it and understand what was going on. Accordingly people wrote in the description how crap it was, because they either couldn't install it or it was "crap because it ran on xwindows".
Today I notice people uploading debian package files of MySQL and other such things to the same sites. I personally think a lot of it is trash, and out there to confuse people who *don't* know anything about unix rather than to help them understand and use these applications.
I don't know if Chris will get much support with his attitude towards Tenon though, but maybe he will. I don't exactly know what his issue with them are. Xtools has been around before xdarwin (xaqua), and did at one stage offer more features. It is a typical case of commercial software being beaten by free software, and I think we will begin to see a lot of this happening on OSX as many of the development tools on OSX are free.
OpenOSX uses Fink to produce a salable good. Where's the problem???
Christoph Pfisterer wants credit for work other people do using free software. That's like insisting that anyone who uses KWord to write reports or GIMP to make graphics needs to explicitly say so. Push this logic to the extreme and every binary produced by G++ would require a similar notice.
If this complainant has a problem with people using free software freely, he's the one in the wrong. Oh, and to cover my ass (in case I'm wrong about the GPL) I wrote this message in Netscape 6 under Linux.
(Er, I meant to link to this bug, actually. But that other one was pretty bad, too.)
Free Hans!
to a copy of the 1993 g++ FAQ
Some very significant management and software changes took place at Apple in 1997 which modified a lot of the variables in this equation.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I would gladly piss off a dozen users who are too obnoxious to bother reading the manual
Which is fine as long as the manual in question is usable. All too often in the open source world, the manual is useless unless you already know what you're doing. Apache and PHP do a good job of getting the user up and running quickly. MySQL does a very reasonable job as well. Too much software ignores that fact that spending five hours reading documentation just to get one thing to work is an extremely frustrating experience.
Make the obvious stuff (the purpose for downloading the software) ridiculously easy to accomplish. Make the rest accessible. That will keep a lot of users off your back.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
If Apple is financing a competitor, whatever its shortcomings, it gives it a lot of validity, and suddenly 90% of the people who use Photoshop (or whatever) realize that all they do is edit pictures for their homepage
There may be some percentage of Photoshop users people that don't really need Photoshop, but I suspect this number is quite small. Photoshop is too expensive to be taken lightly, and in additional to several long-run shareware Mac image editors, Adobe sells Photoshop Elements, a watered-down consumer app.
Everybody I know that uses Photoshop needs Photoshop (or something as full-featured).
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I don't know about anyone else, but reading your brave alternatives and matters of integrity makes my hair stand on end.
illegitimii non ingravare
*His* point was he wants credit anyway, because that's the right thing to do. I would too. He never said the GPL demanded it.
I know in Europe there is a "Moral Right" that goes along with copyright, which can be signed away - basically it includes the right to be the named Author(s) of a piece of work.
If the same is "Moral Rights" are available in the US then surely it becomes a case of simple copyright infringement, rather than a GPL infringement?
(If you look in any recently published UK book you will usually see 'The moral right of the Author has been asserted')
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Please have a look at this and see if you still want to.
And why do so many projects use the GPL but put in exceptions to it? Why bother with the GPL at all?
For crying out loud. He didnt resign over the violations. He resigned becouse he didnt feel he was being given credit where he thought it was due. Totally understandably. In none of the above cases where there ANY GPL violations. If anything, I'd say wanting to recieve public credit is, in part, against the 'feeling' of the GPL. It shouldn't be, but the GPL basically says 'Take it, use it, modify it, pass it on'. It doesnt say 'Ensure that you've bent over backwards to stroke the ego of the individuals that wrote it'. Ok, last statement not really fair the the above individual, becouse credit IS deserved, but I dunno, hes so fed up, he sounds kinda whiny..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I just started using fink two weeks ago. It works and does not destroy the system in the process. If the only cost of the software is time for education and time for giving thanks to the author, then what is all the user whining about?
Running apps like gnumeric, the GIMP and Dia on the Mac makes my mac much more useful.
apple fans, projects like these come just in time, as the old way of just pirating software won't cut it soon, so get used to a little work to make good software happen on your mac. Get used to the fact that good software is sometimes made by difficult people and there is no marketing to shield you from them. It is a small price to pay.
Thanks chrisp and all of you who actually contribute to authoring, testing, supporting software like this.
See this link http://www.macgimp.org/source/
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
There are a lot of reasons why people don't use manuals and FAQs. Think of: lazyness, not being able to understand it, difficult to find your way, no manual can answer all questions. "What is the smartest way to do this" is a typical question where a manual usually doesn't help.
If you have a newsgroup users can exchange experiences and the maintainer of the software needs only to jump in when the users can't help each other.
Unfortunately Fink doesn't have a newsgroup. It only has a mailing list. This has a much higher threshold. Many people are prepared to share their knowledge. But they want it at their time and speed. The don't like to be spammed by a mailing list when they are busy with something else.
In such way Pfisterer could have kept the users at a bigger distance and spent more time programming.
Mentality won't change in a night, if you feel too tire to fight the battle, do take a rest, it is good for you. But don't give up, just don't give up because the future is still bright.
"Added all the cool Brianux stuff, whilst modifying existing code to suit."
Misrepresenting the authorship of a software program such as Linux, depending on the situation, could easily be prosecutable as fraud even if you have a copyright license.
The weakness is that the GPL would probably lose in court, to some degree. This is because copyright law and, in many ways, the legal system, in the US and elsewhere, were never designed to work in accordance with the common good, especially when it comes to issues of property, and even moreso when it comes to the issues of intellectual property (really just an illusion of modern society).
Oh, what an excellent troll!
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The fink author should talk to Warren Robinette, the author of Adventure for the 2600. Or in a more recently example, speak to the authors of anything coming from Apple.
1 1/msg00086.html).
What these people have in common with the author of Fink is that they wrote software for which they didn't receive obvious credit (Apple recently removed credits so that people couldn't target specific Apple employees for recruitment to another software house). Just as not getting specific credit is written into Apple employees' contracts and was written into Atari programmers (one reason so many of the best worked for Activision), the "contract" your essentially "sign" when releasing GPL software doesn't have any provisions to retain who did the work.
One might take a cue from Mr. Robinette and include something in the code that gives you specific credit -- he created the first easter egg in a video game that displayed his name on the screen as the game's author (take a look at the end of the decompiled source to the game. Download the zip on this page: http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/2001
Or one might take an even better cue from those who worked for Activision: If it's key for you to receive credit for your work, make sure it's in the contract!
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Just for the record, my problem with Tenon is not Xtools, but the Gimp package they offer for download. I looked inside it, found that it looked very much like it was built with Fink, and contacted Tenon about it. They were very quick to respond and confirmed that they used Fink, forgot to include credits and were in violation of the various licenses by not providing source (GIMP, glib, gtk+, gnome-libs, gettext and some other things included inside the .app bundle are GPL/LGPL). I was told they'd correct the situation in "a few days". That was on September 25, and when I got back to them some weeks later, I was simply told their lead programmer was very ill. Still nothing has happened to date...
-chrisp
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
One can, under the GPL, provide binary software and source only on request, and one can charge for that initial binary.
My company does just that with the "professional edition" of our linux-based embedded systems development environment, though it's based on Free software.