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MicroBSD Is No More
TrumpetPower! writes "Recently there's been quite a row in the OpenBSD community over copyright infringement by the OpenBSD spinoff, MicroBSD. Many parts of MicroBSD would seem to be a wholesale search-n-replace of the two names...including copyright notices. As a result, MicroBSD has shut down. It's worth noting that, as of this story submission, the MicroBSD Web site is still up and running with no special notices."
You'll note the "Get MicroBSD" links are all 404.
Apache/2.0.43 Server at www.microbsd.com Port 80
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Discussion continues on IRC: irc.microbsd.net #microbsd
www.microbsd.net has the anouncement.
The head of the MicroBSD project wrote to misc@openbsd.org last night that he had just finished removing everything from his site. Go ahead and check it out. Every link I clicked on microbsd.com gave me a 404. MicroBSD is dead. It is no more. They blatantly violated OpenBSD's copyrights. In fact most of MicroBSD was just:
$osname =~ s/Open/Micro/g;
.-.--
www.MicroBSD.net has the following announcement:
The MicroBSD Project has Shut Down! All works have been removed.
To the OpenBSD developers, There was no intent to modify any copyright in the CVS tree. We have publically acknowledged the issue and have shut down this project. We apologize for the inconvience and commotion this has caused the BSD community. It was never our intent to be at odds with anyone in the community to start. All MicroBSD code has been removed from our servers. The web site will go away. The project will cease to exist. This decision is based on time, efforts involved, the lack of developers, and lack of interest. I personally do not have the time, nor am I inclined to continue with a project that has caused this much negativity in the community.
At the suggestions from various repected people in the industry who supported us, we are sorry. We feel it is not in the best interest of the project to continue its exitance. To those that opposed us from the start, We will just go away as you wish.
Specific developer(s) who committed files with those copyright violations were planning on rectifying the issues. Instead, I have decided to completely remove the source tree and all traces of code commited.
There is currently no CVS, cvsweb or downloads available due to a copyright issue being brought to our attention. We have ceased all development activity to address the issue and remove any violations from the cvs tree. This was an unfortunate oversight on our part, and was not intended to violate any copyright issues. We have taken pain staking measures to be sure to not modify/violate any copyrights. We assure you this copyright issue, was an oversight on our part and was not intentional.
In closing we simply ask the the community carry on as it were, and all person(s) with MicroBSD installed, Please remove the code, and install OpenBSD. We will be providing locations to the various apsect of code we had initially committed in features to get the project off the ground before we continued with our planned unique additons to the BSD community. As of now there will be no further contributions to the BSD community as a whole. In closing, Again we apologize for such oversights, and have removed all code.
.-.--
The concern was not that they had modified the code or docs, but the copyright messages. You are not allowed to simply re-assign copyright to yourself (under US and international copyright law).
This has nothing to do with licensing at all. You could put the code under the GPL, MPL, or any of MS EULA for Office, and you would still have the same problem. The only time you can take a work and assign copyright to yourself is if that work is in the Public Domain, which of course means that it has no copyright at all.
You are -not- allowed to do that.
But you _can't_ claim it as your own.
From http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=104 570206117686&w=4
You are STRONGLY urged to use ssh instead of telnet, rlogin, or rsh! ssh is included in all MicroBSD systems. The implementation is OpenSSH, which we are the developers of. (emphasis mine)
So you see, they didn't give credit where credit is due.
They replaced the word OpenBSD with MicroBSD, and didnt take the time to proofread the rest of the text. They just needed to change 'we' to 'OpenBSD' and the problem is fixed.
Much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot. OSS communities like to self destruct over the most minor issues.
If it read "...OpenSSH, which we (we as in ME, stratjakt! If anyone from that slimeball group OpenBSD says different they're lying) are the developers of..." then it would be a lot easier to argue that it was done purposefully.
In the end, just a few more developers no doubt leaving the BSD scene for good.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Frankly, my experiencing have been the exact opposite with FreeBSD and Linux. FreeBSD users and developers have always been easier to approach and nicer to deal with.
Dinivin
The site is down now, with a notice explaining the shutdown of the project.
... mirror of the MicroBSD files/iso images, but after some of the antics performed by the MicroBSD "team", I removed it.
I liked some of the goals that MicroBSD had, but there were too many things I was uncomfortable with. There were "Anonymous" comments in various forums, giving praise and support to MicroBSD -- when in fact those comments were written by Outback Dingo. Failure to credit OpenBSD in any way when basically mirroring their source and customizing it (perhaps they've since added credit, but it was not originally so). The fact that the MicroBSD site was originally hosted on a "virtualhost" type server, provided by a volunteer, instead of being independently hosted.. not a big deal, but it still struck me as unprofessional.
In the end, although I liked the premise of MicroBSD, I just didn't feel comfortable with the way it turned out, and ended up removing the mirror.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
The heart of the BSD license, IMHO, is the "advertising clause." It means that you can do whatever you want with my code, so long as you recognize that I wrote the code. What the MicroBSD project managed to accomplish was a wholesale ripoff job, intentional or not. The "work" at MicroBSD violated the only real restriction on the OpenBSD code, which is the advertising clause.
Theo has done a tremendous amount of work over the years, and arguably his work has contributed not just to the BSD community, but to the open source community as a whole. The man has principles, and he sticks to them. He is hard core. So, it really bugs me to hear people like you complaining about his whining when what he's really doing is standing up for his principles (and his code). I wonder if you feel the same way about RMS; He's always "crying" about the GNU/Linux designation...
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
Well, remember that Theo was forced to resign from NetBSD for the same reason: rude behaviour towards other users and developers. I think the way this was handled, like the OpenBSD fork of NetBSD, says more about Theo than about the BSD community in general.
Networking professionals and ISPs are often *BSD users. The security, stability, and performance of *BSD makes it an ideal choice in such roles. While Linux has made great strides, it is still not on a par with *BSD in many respects. Conversely, *BSD is certainly not as suitable for use on the average desktop.
posted to the openbsd misc list. let the blatant karma whoring begin:
From: OutBack Dingo
Organization: MicroBSD
To: misc@openbsd.org
Subject: MicroBSD has Shut Down
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 06:17:23 -0500
The MicroBSD Project has Shut Down! All works have been removed.
To the OpenBSD developers, There was no intent to modify any copyright in the
CVS tree. We have publically acknowledged the issue and have shut down this
project. We apologize for the inconvience and commotion this has caused the
BSD community. It was never our intent to be at odds with anyone in the
community to start. All MicroBSD code has been removed from our servers. The
web site will go away. The project will cease to exist. This decision is
based on time, efforts involved, the lack of developers, and lack of
interest. I personally do not have the time, nor am I inclined to continue
with a project that has caused this much negativity in the community.
At the suggestions from various repected people in the industry who supported
us, we are sorry. We feel it is not in the best interest of the project to
continue its exitance. To those that opposed us from the start, We will just
go away as you wish.
Specific developer(s) who committed files with those copyright violations were
planning on rectifying the issues. Instead, I have decided to completely
removed the source tree and all traces of code commited.
There is currently no CVS, cvsweb or downloads available due to a copyright
issue being brought to our attention. We have ceased all development activity
to address the issue and remove any violations from the cvs tree. This was an
unfortunate oversight on our part, and was not intended to violate any
copyright issues. We have taken pain staking measures to be sure to not
modify/violate any copyrights. We assure you this copyright issue, was an
oversight on our part and was not intentional.
In closing we simply ask the the community carry on as it were, and all
person(s) with MicroBSD installed, Please remove the code, and install
OpenBSD. We will be providing locations to the various apsect of code we had
initially committed in features to get the project off the ground before we
continued with our planned unique additons to the BSD community. As of now
there will be no further contributions to the BSD community as a whole. In
closing, Again we apologize for such opversights, and have removed all code.
- despite the bonehead story intro, there were only 18 (c) changes in the MicroBSD cvs files, more of an indication of sloppy editing rather than intent to deceive...
.iso, and in fact, a rather nice compact .iso image (about 60MB)...
- one person on an OpenBSD-related forum labeled the person in charge of MicroBSD as a wanted felon who fled N. Carolina...
- why didn't the OpenBSD folks work with MicroBSD?
- MicroBSD offered something OpenBSD doesn't - a freely downloadable
- glad i snarfed one before MicroBSD shut down! it installs a 220MB filesystem with gcc (no X)...
- does this mean that MicroBSD is dead?