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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.
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?
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.
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!
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!)
Reading the links in the article, it seems that OpenOSX did everything correctly and didn't try to hide anything from its customers. But that was not enough for Christoph Pfisterer, he wanted OpenOSX to give more credit to himself on the website.
With macosx.forked.net there seemed to be some real problems with GPL, but they at least seem to want to fix those problems.
After reading all the material directly linked from the story, it seems to me that Christoph is the asshole here.
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.
You say "the GPL would probably lose in court". Why? You don't claim to have any legal experience, and neither do I, but it seems odd that you'd make claims about probabilities.
The GPL is based on the same theory that commerical software licenses are based on: we take a piece of software and copyright it (it's been clearly established that software is copyrightable; therefore there is not any sort of doubt as to whether GPL'd works are validly copyrighted). Since the work is copyrighted, we can require people who wish to copy the work to agree to our terms, whatever they are. We can require them to quack if we want.
If the GPL is not a valid grant of copy license, realize that means the works cannot be distributed at all. It's impossible for copyrighted works to enter the public domain before expiration unless the copyright owner allows it. The GPL is clearly not a statement of public-domain intentions.
If you violate the GPL and are sued, you can either admit that you agreed to the GPL or you can claim you didn't. If you did, we're out of copyright law (and so it doesn't matter what copyright law was designed for) and into contract law. In contract law, you largely don't have rights that you've agreed not to have; you agreed not to violate it when you agreed to it. If you claim you never agreed to the GPL, you're copying a copyrighted work without a license: old-fashioned copyright infringement. It doesn't even matter if the person who gave it to you in the first place violated the GPL and took the copyright notices off; it's still copyrighted (though the penalties would likely be smaller in that case). Copyright doesn't just magically disappear because someone uses it for something other than "you-give-me-money-I-give-you-software" material-world emulation.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
There is no GPL violation. Read the email exchange. Pfisterer does not seem to understand the licensing terms of the GPL himself. There is no need to 'give credit' beyond maintaining copyright notices, and they don't need to be on the web site, they need to come with the source. Trust me, I'm a GPL bigot.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.