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."

Comments

Not Entirely Functioning

[Oculus Habent]

You'll note the "Get MicroBSD" links are all 404.

Apache/2.0.43 Server at www.microbsd.com Port 80

Discussion

[AnonymousCowheart]

Discussion continues on IRC: irc.microbsd.net #microbsd

go to microbsd.net instead

[FiDooDa]

www.microbsd.net has the anouncement.

Re:go to microbsd.net instead

[homer_ca]

EmBSD is a similar project, but they haven't had a release in almost 2 years and the main embsd.org site is down, although the download mirrors and sourceforge page are still up.

MicroBSD's site isn't really up.

[scottj]

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;

Message from MicroBSD.net

[scottj]

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.

Re:Search & Replace

[ajs]

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.

I used to run a ...

[TPS Report]

... 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.