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Castle Technology UK Ripping off Kernel Code?
Jonathan Riddell writes "`It would appear that Castle Technology Limited, UK, have taken some of the Linux 2.5 code, and incorporated it into their own product, "RISC OS", which is distributed in binary ROM form built into machines they sell. This code is linked with other proprietary code.' Full details from Russell King on lkml."
Let's see if the goat has teeth!
They should know better than to do this, they deserve to get sued and the money should go back to kernel development.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
if you make any code opensource, you should be prepared for other's to copy it.
Now let us see what GPL does.....
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Corperate Piracy is ok, its only when people share without profiting that its Piracy.
This is why Linux is bad but Shared source is ok.
Just call Michael Robertson for more info.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Pretty popular thing to do. IntegrityMessenger.com stole Psi's code (psi.sourceforge.net) not too long ago. All you have to do is run 'strings' on the binary and you can still see word Psi in there.
And apparantly it just resulted in them trying to better hide the incriminating code in later versions of the product.
Okay, then. Let's get everybody forming into single-file lines; you'll receive your pitchforks on the left, torches on the right. Please, no shoving, there will be plenty for everyone.
They want to sell you stuff they stole, they should be raided by the RIAA!!! Get Em Hilary Rosen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Is this for real?
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Being a relatively non-hardcore geek, I wonder how it is possible to actually prove that GPL'd code was used?
Once compiled and linked and what-know-I, the source would be rather obscure, and after all, other products seem to do the same tasks, yet not using GPL code..
Please enlighten me!
- rnger
This is the kind of stuff that really gets under my skin. One of the most important aspects of the kernel code is that it is Free. If it wasn't free, it wouldn't be what it is and no one would want to use it at all. Greedy bastards. Forget suing them, I'll fight them myself.
--Mark.
Here is a question... Most OSS, and this kernel, specifically, is created by the contibutions of many individuals. So, who in the world can file a lawsuit over matters like this?
Would it be the many individuals? (They're probably not that rich) Would it be some benefactor, like Mitch Kapor/FSF? (He's rich, but has to pick his battles) Or perhaps a money hungry lawyer working for a fat contingency... Who files the lawsuit and pays the fees?
Have cases like this gone to court in the past?
I have a question, perhaps it does not pertain to this situation... but where do you draw the line about code being stolen?
For example, if lets say I stole a simple 3 line chunk of code that converts a date from one format to another, and threw it in my multi-thousand line project (which is all original except for those 3 lines), would it really be breaking the GPL? I understand that it of course technically is.. but at what point would the 'borrowing' of code be of such basic elements that really, there is no other way to solve a particular problem?
Sure my above example sucks (it's friday afternoon, brains already gone)... but what amount of code warrants a "you're stealing you son of a b*tch" title, and what warrants a "meh... it's not rocket science, hell, there's no other way to do it, even if he hadn't looked at the code, this is the logical solution anyone with half a brain would come to..."...???
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
isn't it a little ironic a messanger titled "IntegrityMessenger" ripping off someone elses code?
Even more ironic is that they are a "Christian Messenging Service". What happened to thou shall not steal...
No, it means that they are commiting willful copyright infringement for commercial gain. The penalties for that are severe and include the larger of statutory and actual damages. The statutory damages can be up to $100K, iirc. Actuals include any revenue which results from the infringement.
I hope somebody tears them a new sphincter, if this is true.
Copyright law allows for something called "statutory damages", which means that if someone infringes on your (registered) copyright you can collect a fixed amount without having to document monetary loss.
"Nobody lost anything", except control over their creations.
Copyright grants a partial legal monopoly on distribution of the copyrighted work. The owner can make people pay for it (the usual approach), or make them accept the GPL, or even prevent circulation of the work altogether (the way Sinatra pulled the movie "Suddenly" off the market after the Kennedy assassination).
See subject.
Tis the folks at FSF that challenge GPL violations. Of course not folks at GNU, since GNU ain't no place or organization.
make world, not war
Acorn Computers is the daddy of all UK computing. While the rest of the geeky kids were using Ti's the UK kids were hacking away on BBC Micros.
:
:
I still have mine here.
The ARM processor is one of the best CPUs in existence.
how ironic that on on this page
http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/rpcalt.htm
the fish in the picture is clearly too big for the inadequate bowl.
They might find that their GPL rip-off is equally dead in the water.
It's a sad day all round. Time to flush them down the toilet.
whoring
if anyone lives nearby maybe they could pop in on Monday and get the sourcecode
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL UK
Sales Telephone Line: 01728 723 200
Lines Open: Monday-Friday 9:00-5:00
Sales Fax Line: 01728 727 427
Lines Open: 24hrs every day
Support Line: 01728 727 424
Lines Open: Monday-Friday 9:00-12:00
Email: sales@castle.uk.co
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Should anything actually happen. Which I whole-heartily agree that something should happen. Maybe even the bigger distributions and users could actually back up Linus and other writers (i.e. redhat, mandrake, debian, IBM, sgi etc). After all they have a vested interest in the continuing development of code to support marketed products, which can only decline if people feel ripped off and there enthusiasm declines. And then such companies i) have loss of profits, ii) have to put money back into the funding they have tryed to save on by using linux. The main reasoning here, is without decent backing you lose, just because you can't fund any action.
--+> Life, is there any?
hahah.. That is even better.. I didn't notice that.. wonder if god made them do it?
...that Linux is somewhat unique here. If I steal your copyrighted book and sell it, I'm taking revenue from your potential customers. You lose money and customers.
If I steal Linux, I sell it and make money. But "Linux" doesn't lose any money (I'm personifying Linux here, bear with me) because Linux is free.
However, Linux does suffer damages. The thing of value to Linux is its user base. The only reason somebody improves Linux is because he's a user. If I take away a potential user by offering the same feature by stealing Linux, I'm eroding its user base, future development potential, and therefore value.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The FSF vigorously defends its copyright on code it owns; it does not own Linux. It will be up to Linus and gang to defend their own copyright, though the FSF might offer to assist.
And no, RMS is not a lawyer. The FSF's lawyer and chief enforcer is Eben Moglen.
VC on your front porch, all radioactively tagged, with a sign that says,"Please help yourself to some capital, but if you make any money put something back in."
Oh, and this is magical VC, so as soon as you take something out it's still got the same amount in the box. Nifty, huh?
So, there's no real harm in taking out. No one "loses" anything. But if you take out, make money, and don't put back in you become what is technically known as a "shit head."
And even the law has been known to formally uphold what it is generally refered to as the "social contract."
Now the only question is what are armed South Vietnamese dissidents are doing on the front porch in the first place.
KFG
...Is that they could have borrowed code from a BSD instead, and no one would care, as the license specifically permits it.
:-)
If these allegations are true, not only are they violating the GPL, they're morons to boot.
Obviously, the above argument is absurd, but points out that Slashdot has a double standard. On one hand, it is ok when a 14-year-old violates the copyright of a RIAA or MPAA-owned company. On the other hand, it is not OK when a company releases GPL under terms not compatible with the GPL.
So, what is it going to be? Do we respect both the RIAA's copyright and the copyright which GPL programs have, or do we respect neither?
If you want the GPL to be respected, respect other people's copyrights.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
According to ESR's Jargon File, a LART (Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool) is a large, blunt object used to smack some sense into people who do offensive (or offensively stupid) things. Could be just the thing here...
Nope. Consider the physical-property equivalent: I steal something from you. Do you have the right to come steal it back? No. Similarly, if they "steal" GPL'd code, we don't have a right to steal it back; the legally correct course of action is to file suit, get an injunction against distribution of the stolen code, and recoup losses from the infringer.
You are confusing the conditions for complying with the licence with the penalties for infringing the copyright.
The judge *could* order compliance with the licence as part of the penalty phase, but it is much more likely that he would award monitary damages.
The interesting thing is that each patch to the linux kernel could be viewed as separately copyrighted by whoever the author of that particular patch is. The statutory damages can reach $100K per violation if the judge wants it to.
I don't know what is more disturbing: Somebody disgracing the sacred GPL for profit (GASP!), or the fact that somebody else actually examined a binary ROM looking for the binary signatures of Linux kernel functions.
One of the two needs to get a life (I'll leave it up to you to decide who).
I don't know what is more disturbing: a hacker mentioned on slashdot who needs to get a life, or somebody posting to slashdot on a Friday evening saying the hacker needs to get a life.
One of the two needs to get a life (I'll leave it up to you to decide who).
Actually, I'd prefer that they be forced to open source their code instead. Have you looked into RiscOS? It fits into something like a 4meg (yes four megabyte) rom, boots in two seconds, and screams on any old piece of junk processor. I can only imagine how it would run on my AthlonXP. A tad faster than Mandrake no doubt.
Before everyone starts clamoring for all out war against these horrible, horrible GPL violators, I would advise you at least give it a few days for the dust to settle. Slashdot, after all, is hardly known for responsible reporting, and has quite often reported such violations erroneously and caused quite a bit of damage to the reputations of various corporations.
--sdem
No, if the binary is distributed for a fee, then the source must be available, even if it's for a nominal fee. Charging you for the media and shipping is perfectly acceptable. However, charging you $40 for the binaries and $200 for the source is NOT acceptable, as the source fee is clearly not reasonable, compared to the charge for the binaries.
Charging for GPL code is not forbidden. You only need to provide the source.
I don't remember who it was (probably somebody here does), but there was once this company suing another for stealing their source.
:-)
Of course the defendants blatantly denied everything and asked for proof. So in front of the judge and the rest of the audience, one of the programmers nonchalantly typed a sequence of keys on the defendant's software and... a huge easter egg showing the name of the original programmers appeared on the screen.
Too bad they changed the function signatures, such a definite victory may not be obtainable in court this time. But I sure hope a good precedent comes out of this.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
It looks to me like Castle Technologies just happens to sell machines which have RISC OS on them. One of many companies in the UK.
Wouldn't the company in violation be RISCOS Ltd?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The two camps are ideologically different. That doesn't make one more right then the other. Misusing the GPL like this is akin to me taking your BSD project and forcing you to GPL it. I don't think you'd be happy.
Quack, quack.
there are three perfectly good sets of BSD code to copy from with zero repercussions that do the exact same thing.
If that were Microsoft that released an operating system that used significant chunks of the Linux kernel, there would already be a paypal donation site already set up to fund the legal battle to get them to comply with the GPL.
Copyright violations by individuals at home for private use are quite debatable...a company violating a copyright in order to make a profit is not debatable in the least...it is PRECISELY in the spirit of copyright and why it was invented in the first place.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I'm wondering who's responsible for suing for GPL infringements... the copyright holders are numerous and it's doubtful they'd all have enough money to fight that kind of legal battle with any kind of big software company. It seems so odd to imagine the EFF suing for a copyright infringement. FSF maybe?
My Blog
Interesting point but only hypothetical and not relevant in this case. The very nature of the BSD license is that if you issue your code under it, you more or less grant anyone else the right to do whatever the hell they want with it (as long as they keep your name on it).
On the other hand, If you choose GPL, you are aiming to restrict people's rights, so you need to be ready to be a policeman if people try and operate outside those restrictions.
To stretch a historical point, the BSD license is somewhat like Gandhi's passive resistance and refusal to fight, a strategy that eventually overturned the aggressor (ie Britain) more effectively than fighting ever could have done.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Well IANAL but I expect each one of the copyright holders for the code could individually seek damages for the infringement. Alternatively they could probably all work together on a single suit.
2 .html 3 .html
That is why the poster to lkml mentioned the sections since all the copyright holders of those sections are affected.
As to comments that have or are going to be made regarding the GPL getting its day in court, the reason that this has not happened already is not because the GPL is weak, but because it is strong.
Much murmuring...to the supposed effect that the absence of judicial enforcement, in US or other courts, somehow demonstrates that there is something wrong with the GPL, that its unusual policy goal is implemented in a technically indefensible way, or that the Free Software Foundation, which authors the license, is afraid of testing it in court. Precisely the reverse is true. We do not find ourselves taking the GPL to court because no one has yet been willing to risk contesting it with us there.
Eben Moglen
In fact he has written two papers on the specific issue of GPL enforcement.
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-1
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-1
My expectation is that this company will buckle as soon as their lawyers get a look at the GPL in detail and what their developers/management did. The fact that the company actually took steps to hide their infringement is also going to look very bad in court. They are only making it worse for themselves. They should do themselves a favour and work out an agreement with the kernel developers before they really get burned.
But invariably the guilty corporations are violating copyright law first before they are violating the GPL. This makes sense, because the GPL is actually more permissive than copyright law. And copyright law has been tested, many times - and it does have teeth.
If someone can present an argument why Castle in this case is violating the GPL, and not violating standard copyright law in the process, then I would like to hear it.
-renard
Double standards...gotta love it.
They could have adapted code from netBSD's PCI and IO subsystem and integrated it in their binary only roms in total legality.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
No.. the GPL ONLY gets it's strength from copyright law. IF copyright law allows it, the GPL can be IGNORED.
The GPL is the set of terms under which you can do things OTHER than what you are allowed to do under standard copyright.
It is not a use license, you don't agree to it in order to use said software; it is a license that grants you extra rights beyond what copyright does should you CHOOSE to use it (abide by it's terms).
> On a strictly personal level, i believe that when some large ass company (i.e. Microsoft, Riaa, Adobe ) commits multiple henious crimes against the people (i.e. DMCA, Sklyarov, Monopolistic abuses), that the company no longer is worthy of copyright protection. Thats why i have ZERO problem with people downloading music, burning off copies of Windows and Office, etc, for their friends and family, and giving the above companies a giant middle finger. Its civil disobienace at its best.
Hardly 'civil disobedience' at all unless you plan on publicly breaking a law and then publicly going to jail as a way of protesting that you feel the law is unjust.
If you're not willing to take the consequences, you're simply a sneak thief; read up on Thoreau and Gandhi before trying to hide your actions under their words.
The law doesn't say anywhere that you're allowed to acquire copyrighted material without paying for it, as long as it's not for commercial purposes.
The law says that it's a violation of copyright law to participate (as sender or recipient) in copying the property of another entity.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I just thought of something reading this article. Most people (including myself) seem to have a lot of problems with EULAs. Primarily because they limit what you can do with your software/hardware whatever.
But isn't the GPL more or less the same thing? It's trying to control what you do with something after it is in your possession?
Not trying to troll, trying to come up with the distinction.
Like others have said.. violations of the GPL have to be fought. If you fail to enforce the license then it soon becomes meaningless and you loose the ability to enforce it later.
Having an enforceable GPL is important. Many of the programmers who choose to use the GPL license or work on GPL licensed code would be lost if GPL turned out to be un-enforceable.
Personally I have no interest in spending a few hundred hours working with a group of programmers writing code only to see a company come around, grab it up, change a few things and perhaps change the output to a proprietary format. Then they start selling it and it becomes very popular but they keep the code to themselves.
Wouldn't that be great? Now not only are they making money off our original effort, but we can't even take advantage of the new product without paying. Heck, we can't even make our original program use their file format without risking breaking the law (DMCA.)
So even though we did nearly all the work we all would have to pay someone else in order to be compatible with the version that "everybody else" was using.
With GPL (if it is enforceable,) the company would have to release their changes back as GPL as well. Now we don't have to worry about suddenly needing to pay for what we worked on and gave to the world as free.
As far as wasting time fighting instead of coding goes... that is exactly why a lot of GPL programmers have assigned copyright of their software to third parties like the FSF.
Actually, speaking as the webmaster of www.riscos.org, that quote is mine, and I have no link to Castle Technology at all. If you're going to call someone names, at least check your facts to see who you're accusing.
www.riscos.org is completely independent and in no way affiliated to ANY RISC OS hardware manufacturers.
You don't understand this - these are no PCs you can run Windows on.
:-) Even the most obscure Linux port probably has four full-time-equivalent developers.
No, it's you who doesn't understand. What makes you think I'd want to run Windows on it? I'm sure the operating system overhead is lower than for Windows, but probably not enough to make up for a four-fold reduction in cycles.
RISC_OS
Heh, 4 full time developers?
So it's another proprietary desktop operating system, but one that only runs on slow expensive machines, has an infinitesimal marketshare and development community, isn't unix-compatible, and has a graphic design stuck in the early 90s? I should care why?
Any few of those I could put up with (free/non-unix/marginal, or proprietary/gorgeous) but the combination is pretty damning.
I'm happy to admit that if I'd gone to school in the UK, I'd probably feel all nostalgic and want to buy one. But I didn't and I don't. And I especially don't want to support the kind of rat-bastardry discussed in the original story.
a case like this could provide a precedent that would prove that the GPL is legally enforceable - something that has not occurred to date,
That's right, it hasn't. And violations are regular and frequent (dozens of times a year, according to Eben Moglen, the FSF General Counsel). But so far, no one has been stupid enough to take it to court. But Eben keeps hoping someone will. From an essay on his website: "'Look,' I say, 'at how many people all over the world are pressuring me to enforce the GPL in court, just to prove I can. I really need to make an example of someone. Would you like to volunteer?'"
Maybe this will finally be the time. But I'm not going to hold my breath. No one has had the proper combination of balls and stupidity yet. Frankly, I find that as persuasive, if not more so, than an actual court ruling on the matter.
Oh, I dunno - some of us really like those sort of uptime numbers ...
You don't own the SW after you buy it.
Then what about the Adobe v. Softman precedent, stating that if it looks like a sale of a copy and quacks like a sale of a copy, it's a sale of a copy?
A consumer of mass-market software surely doesn't own the copyright on the program, but unless there's a specific rental agreement between the consumer and the copyright owner, the consumer does own a copy of the program. (A "copy" is defined as the medium in which the program is fixed.) And if the consumer owns a copy, then the defenses in 17 USC 109 and 17 USC 117 become available, but the right to distribute modified versions is not among them.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You want to send a message to MS, RIAA, etc? Don't download their products. Don't buy their products. Don't have anything to do with them. Then someone else won't be buying MS Office to read that Word document you just sent them.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
A note on a previous link posted
According to a rumour on top 'geek' web site Slashdot, Castle have been accused of using GPL'd code in RISC OS 5. The rumour was originally posted by ARMLinux developer Russell King and there is already a healthy debate running as to the possible implications of GPL breach. Please note that www.riscos.org is NOT affiliated to ANY RISC OS hardware manufacturers, so if you're a GPL geek, please don't bother inundating me with emails as I don't have time to reply to them all. www.riscos.org is and will always remain impartial regarding public news items.
The original code (or work) would still be copyright it's original copyright date. The later code would be copyright it's new release date. If you can disambiguate the two (for example, by finding a copy of the original), you get the advantages of the original copyright date.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
This is the first Slashdot story in over a year that has prompted me to actually register in order to post a response.
A programmer by trade, I grew up on the Acorn RISC machines. To see that the phrase "RISC OS" needs double-quotes makes me wince... My high school prizes were spent on books about ARM assembley language, and to this day x86 assembler seems retarded by comparison. I spent a whole summer working shit jobs in order to buy the RISC OS Programmer's Reference Manuals and Acorn's ANSI C compiler. I know it sounds like a typical Slashdot takeoff but it's true!
So I read this story with disgust and a sense of betrayal, it's like my own father has been had up for peddling drugs to schoolkids! Honestly Acorn (sorry, "Castle Technology Ltd" now), how low can you stoop? A lot of young British geeks owe their IT literacy to the company you once were, but if this story is true then you will find no sympathy from even your staunchest fans.
I am really sad to see this happening.
If only we cold discover linux source being used by microsoft. The war would be won.
Before throwing this kind of accusation onto the Slashdot frontpage and having all the American pinguinista Linux-geeks go nuts over it, please check your facts. Going berko at Castle because of possible GPL code in RISC OS is like going mad at Dell because of what's in Microsoft Windows. Castle sells Acorn-clone computers which run RISC OS: they do not make RISC OS, they're a reseller in much the same relation with RISCOS Ltd/Pace who makes RISC OS, as Dell is with Microsoft who makes Windows.
If I was Castle, I'd be considering legal action against Slashdot right now, as this is one heck of an unfair slam to their company.
" ...but who cares? People who license their code under the BSD License don't waste time and energy investigating these types of issues. Instead, they keep coding. "
;)
I care. That doesn't mean I want to mod you down either. It just proves that people don't understand the spirit of the GPL. Why it exists. Why it's important to defend.
Part of the point of the GPL isn't so much the technical aspect of the license - there's RELIGION there also. It is the unspoken belief (well, I think RMS has said something to this effect), that many coders contribute to the GPL codebase to make it better (and therefore save the universe from oppression or something like that)
When one steals from the GPL codebase, their contribution - which if sold is REQUIRED, must be returned to the whole. To not do so, to take the accomplishments of others who build on this license diminishes us all. It's as simple as that. Now, it is apparent (at least to what I've heard) that what this company (Castle) has STOLEN the work of others. Of course it should be looked at.
Hell, since many of us are now paying the "assumed CD-R piracy" fees everytime we buy blanks, this at least is a blatent violation of a legally enforceable license.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
To sue the infringers, the copyright should (must? IANAL) be assigned to the FSF. I as a GNU GPL developer and copyright owner may not want my code assigned to FSF for personal reasons. How then does the FSF sue on my behalf? Can they legally do so?
It would be a great example of testing the GPL without running into the copyright argument.
An even better situation would be to write code, release the code under the GNU GPL, give it to a friend, sign a legal contract offering him use of the copyrighted code if and only if it is used under the terms of the GNU GPL, and then have him violate the terms of the GPL for either (A) release of derived source, (B) distribution, or (C) both.
Take each other to court, represent yourselves (in propia persona), and have a judge resolve the issue. Sue for enough over the small claims limitations, and when done, release him from legal liability if the suit is successful.
You set precedent, appeals potentials, and all without the FSF's involvement (or political backwash).
--Matt
RISC OS is actually owned by Pace Microtechnologies Plc. They acquired it from Acorn Computers Plc when Acorn was broken up. RISC OS is developed by RISC OS Ltd who licence it from Pace and develop it for the desktop machines. Castle Technologies obtained the rights to manufacture and distribute Acorn's Risc PC in the break up but have since started developing their own products.
From the details it's not clear whether Castle are the culprits or RISC OS Ltd. It is unlikely to be Pace as they are not interested in the desktop products. Knowing some of the parties concern I know where my suspicions lie but I'm not saying.
The BBC were really keen to get computers to the people. They made a magazine TV programme aimed at non-geeky people presented in a non-patronising way. They'd show you computers being used in the field, have a bit of a discussion and show you some source code and explained how it worked.
They also used the Teletext system to distribute free BASIC source code, even before they released their computer they were supplying source for the Acorn Electron. You needed a teletext adapter to get it into your machine. When I was 10 or 11 I used to sit there with a pencil and graph paper copying down the source from the screen. I hadn't even used a computer by then, let alone owned one. I had no idea what I was writing down at first but gradually I got some sort of idea of what was going on. It was made more difficult by the fact that in order to maximize the bandwidth the newlines were tokenized so one line ran into another like this (I'm using ! as newline):
10 INPUT "Hello, what is your name?",name!20 IF name "DrSkwid" THEN 50!30 PRINT "Agghhh Doctor I've been expecting you"!40 GOTO 60!50 PRINT "Daleks, kill ",name!60 PRINT "bye"
happy days
glad you made it to Berkeley
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
A brief history lesson, that might help to make one or two things clearer. Its as accurate as I can manage, but don't sue me for slipups, right? Years ago there was Acorn Computers Ltd; they produced the BBC Micro, BBC Master etc. They then set about designing their own 32 bit cpu for their next generation of computers, and the ARM chip was born. ARM Limited was formed as a spin off and carries on administrating the architecture today. Acorn went on to use the ARM chip in various computers; its first OS was called Arthur, which later developed into RISC OS. Acorn used RISC OS both in desktop targetted machines and increasingly in a range of set top box like products and other embedded devices. The first bunch of ARM chips developed ran in what was called '26 bit mode' (don't worry about it), and the OS largely depended on some custom support chips. Eventually Acorn took the decision to drop out of the desktop market; when it did so, it granted a license to a new company (RISC OS Ltd) to the latest version (4) of its software. RISC OS Ltd carried on developing this OS and continue to do so today as part of their Select scheme. Shortly after granting the license, Acorn split into 2 sections; one became element 14, and the other was taken over by Pace. Pace carried on developing RISC OS in house, and produced a 32 bit hardware independent version of RISC OS. Later, AIUI, Pace stopped RISC OS development work, and shortly afterwards Castle announced that it was bringing desktop machines to market using the Pace version of RISC OS. Some sort of license deal had been made between Pace and Castle - my understanding is fuzzy here, I don't know if its a direct license or whether Castle have a license through another third party. It is this latest version of RISC OS that the accusation of use of GPL'd code has been made against. RISC OS Ltd, ARM Ltd, and Element-14 (AIUI now subsumed by Broadcom) are *not* implicated in any way - don't send them hate mail! riscos.org are *not* implicated in any way - thats a web site run by enthusiasts. Its not clear to me at which point the GPL'd code got introduced into the source tree; it could have been at any point after the RISC OS Ltd tree was forked from Acorns original source. Also, for those that don't know, Russell King was one of the prime instigators of ARM Linux, so together with Linus himself is probably one of the most significant opinions on this matter. FWIW: I'm an independent software contractor, who has worked under contract for Acorn, Pace, e-14, and RISC OS Ltd (though not on the portion of the code under discussion). I have no axe to grind here - this post is purely intended to sort out who the players in this particular drama are (and aren't!)
The sad thing is that I had really heard nice things about RISCOS... if it were possible to get an old machine inexpensively in the US, I would have tried it.
That's a bit like saying that you would not buy a second hand 486 with MS DOS on, because a different PC manufacturing company ripped off some GPL code last year to get part of their new system working.
I think a lot of people are getting Castle confused with RISC OS, and in this case even Acorn, who don't exist any more - the code being discussed is for the new Castle Iyonix machine, released just before Christmas 2002. It is the first 32 bit RISC OS machine, and as such needs a 32 bit OS. Castle have released RISC OS 5, which is based on RISC OS which is licensed by Pace, who bought it from Acorn just before they were closed down (about 5 years ago I believe).
It is RISC OS 5 that has the alleged GPL breach; previous versions of RISC OS have nothing to do with Castle, apart from Castle's machines run RISC OS.
As a general comment, it would be nice if people on slashdot spent a little more time looking into the facts before posting.
On a separate note, if you really are interested in getting an old Acorn machine, there are a lot of second hand Acorn machines available at extremely reasonable prices if you're willing to spend a little time looking for it - for example, newsgroups, community websites, magazines (such as Archive, which has a small ads section), or companies which sell second hand RISC OS machines, like CJE Micros.
I'm dangerous when I know what I'm doing
Just installed an HP printer and the following came up with the EULA. I wonder, if it ever turned out that they infringed on Open Source (e.g. GPL), if it would effect the entire license, making it null and void, i.e. letting me disassemble until my hearts content (clause 4).
8. U.S. Government Restricted Rights. The Software has been developed entirely at private expense. It is delivered and licensed, as defined in any applicable DFARS, FARS, or other equivalent federal agency regulation or contract clause, as either "commercial computer software" or "restricted computer software", whichever is applicable. You have only those rights provided for such Software by the applicable clause or regulation or by these License Terms.
All your base are belong to us!