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Mambo Users Threatened
An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article about a recent dispute over code in Mambo (a Free CMS). A Mr. Connolly has sent threatening emails to Mambo users over this, a move John Weathersby of OSSI was quoted as saying 'That's ... not prudent.' The dispute is over some trivial code that checks whether a story is a lead story and if so displays it across multiple columns, as it's a modification of GPL code the Mambo team maintain it must remain GPL but Mr. Connolly claims otherwise."
...between himself and the developer but despite numerous requests he has refused to produce it."
He should just type one up in MS Word and use that.
A fake document can be used as evidence.
Just ask Dan Rather.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
When are we going to start putting the Coral link IN THE STORY around here?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
WARNING Issued to Users of Popular Software Application
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
CHICAGO, September 15, 2004 -- The following is an Open Letter from Furthermore, Inc. to the Open Source and Technology Community Regarding the Misappropriation of Intellectual Property:
If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
Our company, Furthermore, Inc., owns the code that enables the appearance and management of the "Lead Story Block" in Mambo. This code was taken without our permission by a lead member of the Mambo Development Team and put into Mambo's core program. Our copyright was then attributed to Miro International. Here we are reiterating our ownership of the Intellectual Property and issue a formal WARNING that we are preparing to file legal action against users of this application.
Do know that we've tried to resolve this cooperatively. However, the leadership of the Mambo Project is intractable in their misunderstanding in fact and law. They wrongly contend that since the code was put into the "General Public License" pool, it too must be GPL. Also, they wrongly contend that as our trade secrets have been variously modified, they are immune.
Bottom line: As express permission was never granted, their transfer of copyright ownership without express written authority is null and void. Also, the right to use any/all derivative works also was/is not granted as defined by law. Lastly, using a trade secret to gain unfair advantage is by definition against the law.
Anticipating that problems like these would be greatly amplified by the Internet, the US Congress recently and significantly strengthened the power of the law. As a result, the consequences of an infringement have never been more stringent. In addition to the punitive monetary damages that are being awarded in related civil suits, the law now makes these types of activities a federal crime.
In 1997, Congress passed the No Electronic Theft Act; and in 1996, it passed the Economic Espionage Act.
The NET Act makes copyright infringement a crime. It's a misdemeanor if it is done for commercial advantage or private financial gain, or by making or distributing one or more copies of copyrighted works that have a total retail value in excess of $1,000 within a 180-day period. It's a felony if it involves a minimum of ten copies of copyrighted works with a retail value of more than $2,500 within a period of six months. To date, NET Act related cases primarily involve pirates accused of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted computer software over the Internet. Sentencing under the NET include substantial fines and imprisonment of 3 to 10 years.
The EEA makes it a crime to steal (or misappropriate) trade secrets. The Act makes even the attempt or conspiracy to steal or misappropriate trade secrets a crime. The Act includes both direct and indirect theft of a trade secret, including its alteration or destruction. Individuals and organizations convicted of violating the EEA face severe penalties. Section 1832 of the Act covers theft of a trade secret "that is related to or included in a product," including both direct and indirect theft of a trade secret, including its alteration or destruction. A person convicted of violating Section 1832 faces a fine of up to $500,000 or a prison sentence of up to 10 years, or both, while any organization that commits any offense described in Section 1832 may be fined up to $5,000,000.
Lastly, we deeply regret that we have no choice but to seek remedy from the users of Mambo. Mambo has explicitly informed us that "the Mambo project can offer no further assistance in this matter. Mambo can not be party to any disputes between individuals or companies concerning the use of Mambo." Plainly, it's you the user they've left holding the bag.
Sincerely,
Brian Connolly
President
Furthermore, Inc.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
It depends on the accent and intonation. Consider it Darth Vader-style (original trilogy of course)...
"Sir, the rebels have sent memos to the open source users"
"(menacing wheeze) That's....not prudent. Prepare a shuttle craft"
Or how about Pratchett Death-style:
"THAT'S...NOT PRUDENT. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE'S JUST ME."
Or Dirty Harry-style.
"So the question you've got to ask yourself is, do you feel prudent punk? Well, do yah?"
Myriad of remaining comedy voices left as an exercise for the reader.
Cheers,
Ian
...when he could have written a slanderous mambo?
If you are jumping up and down about how long it took you to figure it out and upmodding and threatening mod points, atleast provide a clicky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_sy stem
And of course I post as AC to avoid karma whoring.
Security companies use FUD all the time to drive the point home. And many of them are extremely wealthy as a result.
The different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality. If you don't install a firewall, anti-virus software, and apply patches, you're not likely to last. So when they spread FUD, they're actually just educating. When SCO or Microsoft spreads FUD, they're just marketing. Sure, educating potential customers and marketing to potential customers can overlap - but don't be confused that FUD is necessarily an evil thing.
The chief component of FUD is Fear... Fear and Doubt. Doubt and Fear. The TWO components of FUD are Fear and Doubt... And Uncertainty. The THREE components of FUD are Fear Uncertainty and Doubt... and an almost fanatical devotion to litigation.
I could be misunderstanding it, but Connolly seems to be saying his code, which he paid a developer to write and told he could not GPL and rerelease it, was put into the Mambo main branch, while his developer is saying it's similar code in function, not [necessarily] form, and reimplementing it for free after being paid to write a proprietary version isn't the same as submitting the code he wrote for Connolly to the Mambo source tree. I could be mistaken here, but couldn't this easily be resolved by a simple comparison of the Mambo and Futuremore source code? I mean, really.
In addition, the Newsforge article's summary claims that Connolly's code is out in the wild, whether it should be or not. That's not been proven, in any of the data I've read. Shouldn't the dispute first resolve whether the code is actually from the Furthermore source before the issue of licensing even comes up?
I don't know about you, but this does sound a lot like SCO...
10 PRINT "Your open source project has our code!"
20 PRINT "Prove it!"
30 PRINT "We don't have to prove it, it's our code!"
40 GOTO 20
It's only an insult if it's not true.
The modification was then "leaked" to Mambo.
Not entirely accurate. According to the guy who wrote the code, he just wrote a different implementation of the idea, and gave that to Mambo.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
From the sounds of it, Sakic took some of the work he was paid to do exclusively for Connelley and gave it away to the Mambo guys.
The moral of the story is, read the whole article.
Sakic claims there are two separate peices of code based on code already in Mambo. So not only did he not publish the work he did for Connolly, it was derived from GPL-ed code in the first place.
If Connolly wanted to build a proprietary product based on open-source code, he should have started out with code under a less restrictive license like the BSD one.
While the first bit of the newsforge article almost goes out of its way to give Connelly's claims the benefit of doubt, the most interesting bit is the coder's (Sakic) reply at the very very end of the article (I know most of you didn't or can't read that far ;) ).
He is redistributing Mombo from his website, but theoretically it would only be original Mombo code (without his contracted mods) if the mods hadn't made it back into the main branch.
If I were paid to, say, take The Horde, and make modifications to it for a company in order to make it interact with product X, thereby giving this company a (percieved) advantage over their competitors, I have no right to take the modifications and give them back to the The Horde development team without permission from the company I was contracted by.
Now, If the company I wrote the code for were to go on and sell "their version" of The Horde, it would have to be GPL'd, but they are only using it internally - so it doesn't.
This is one of the advantages of OSS to comercial entities - they can take the code, modify it to their needs and use it without hassle. They can make money with an OSS program, they just can't make money off selling a derivative of a program without sharing the love (GPL'ing it).
Although, I'd like to see this guy do the noble thing and release the changes back to the Mombo team as a show of good will and gratitiude for being able to use the code as a base for his success, he is in no way compelled to do so.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I love this paragraph. As a long time /. reader, it just had me snickering away...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Brian Connolly will distort this story every way til Tuesday, but there is only one set of facts that matter in this case:
1. Brian Connolly paid a Mambo Open Source developer to modify 9 trivial lines of an existing GPL component.
2. One month later, the developer added a similar technique to the Mambo core.
3. Brian Connolly's actual code NEVER appeared in the core Mambo software in any way shape or form.
4. Therefore, any of Connolly's claims are based solely on protecting his big "trade secret", or the very "idea" of displaying a leading story following by two columns of headlines.
5. Any programmer knows how trivial this is, and that this layout technique has been in use since the advent of HTML tables. It is not a "trade secret" that has any protection under any law.
Please contact Brian Connolly and ask him to produce the offending code. He will not be able to because it simply does not exist.
- A Mambo User and Developer
p.s. Furthermore also claims it never distributed the software. This is not only false (we have screenshots of his old download section) but irrelevent given the facts above.
actually apparently he *did* redistribute it... at least according to the guy who did the contract work
"I should mention that Connolly has distributed copies of Mambo under the GPL on his homepage (http://www.literatigroup.com/furthermore/, now removed, screenshot available) " -- Emir Sakic
*shrug* I think Sakic summed it up nicely...
To summarize it:
1) The code delivered to Brian Connolly is not the same as the code implemented in Mambo.
2) The code delivered to Brian Connolly was derived from GPL, Copyright Miro International Pty.
3) Brian Connolly distributed copies of Mambo that had the so-called 'infringing' functionality under the GPL.
4) There are no copyright assignments with my signature on.
5) Brian Connolly has no trademarks or patents on anything resembling the disputed functionality.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Emir Sakic, the developer of code in dispute:
"I modified an existing Mambo frontpage component and hardcoded nine lines of code that would display the leading story."
"A month later (October 3, 2003) I developed similar functionality and contributed it to Mambo core. I did not use the same code as the nine lines delivered to Connolly. I implemented a different, dynamic solution with selectable frontpage settings."
"Mr Connolly still claims that Mambo contains the code developed for him when in fact it does not. If you would take a look, you would see that the code in Connolly's site differs from the code in any version of Mambo. "
If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
:-)
If people/companies can be sued for just using software then our legal system would be in worse shape than it is today.
I've had this argument time and time again with people online. Just by USING something doesn't make you guilty of breaking the law. If I contributed however, well, that's another story altogether.
For example, if I put something into the New York Times that I didn't have business submitting then sure I'm liable. If I merely purchased a copy of the paper and read it then I'm not liable.
Our courts might be messed up but they are not stupid
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Gates has set back the cause of quality proprietary software by 20 years with his viral-like Microsoft EULA, which infects everything it comes into contact with.
Notice that Apple based their OS around the Darwin kernel, precisely because of the major problems inherant in the Microsoft EULA.
How can we (the closed source community) ever hope to be taken seriously by the people with the big bucks (Fortune 500 corportations and governments) when our main software license imposes so many unreasonable restrictions? It's time to kill the Microsoft EULA.
IANAL, but this seems like a very simple dispute to settle.
Mr. Connolly's dispute is with Mr. Sakic. When you pay someone to do creative work for you, you do not necessarily transfer ownership of the copyright with it. First things first, Mr. Connolly must produce a contract that transfers the copyright to him. If he has no such contract, he has no case what-so-ever because he doesn't own the code.
Secondly, with such a contract, he must show that the code in Mambo actually infringes on his copyright. Without such proof, he has no case what-so-ever because there is no infringement.
Now, again IANAL, but if Mr. Connolly were to be able to prove both of these things, restitution must come from Mr. Sakic, not from some innocent bystander. The *users* of Mambo are *not* in violation of any copyright law. As an example, it is not infringement of copyright for me to listen to a copy of a song -- only to *copy* it.
The Mambo team *might* also be infringing since they distribute Mambo. However, I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that no court in the world would hear a case against Mambo without resolution of a case against Mr. Sakic. If Mr. Connolly makes no move to sue Mr. Sakic, I believe they are pretty much safe to ignore him (Note: this is not legal advice as I am in no way qualified to give advice).
Now, if Mr. Connolly instead argues that the code modification is a trade secret, then he also only has a case against Mr. Sakic. Once a trade secret has been released, it is no longer a trade secret. He may indeed have a case against Mr. Sakic in this area (though I highly doubt it), but no one else is at risk.
So in summary, Mr. Connolly should sue Mr. Sakic if he has a legitimate grievance. Until that issue is settled, he would be wise to keep his mouth shut.
In my personal opinion, if you hire a free software programmer to modify a GPL piece of software, it is *your* responsibility to explain *very clearly* that you do not want the changes distributed. Distribution of modified GPL code is the norm. If you do not explain this I think you will have a hard time convincing anyone that the programmer should have known better.
From what I can tell from the articles, I don't see where this guy has anywhere to stand. Assuming that the developer is telling the whole truth, then he's got nothing - it's the developers copyright, not his. Even assuming that Connolly is telling the whole truth, I find it hard to believe that he's going to be able to any real damages. The code in question is small and the people distributing it are doing so in good faith. Trade secrets obviously won't apply to a frigging "leading story" block. Connolly also claims that he hasn't actually confirmed that the code in Mambo is similiar to the code in his product - why would anyone listen to legal threats when he hasn't even performed this minimal due dilligence?
It's obvious to anyone that this scenario could easily have been avoided. The issue here is the restrictive nature of the GPL. Had this code been released under the more flexible and free BSD license, none of these issues would arise.
WRONG.
The issue here is that Connolly claims Sakic inserted code under a restrictive licence into a GPL program without the copyright holder's permission. Replace "GPL" with "BSD", and the argument made by Connolly is the same, regardless of its legal backing.
At most, the only additional right Sakic would have if Mambo were BSD would be the ability to relicence Mambo code into a proprietary program whether or not he is the original author; credit need only be given. Under the GPL, Sakic would have to be the original author in order to relicence the code.
However, Connolly's argument arises from the appearance of similar functionality in Mambo after it was added to his own proprietary program. He claims the code was lifted from the modifications made by Sakic; the programmer says he reimplemented the functionality in a clean situation. BSD or GPL, Connolly would still argue that Sakic had no right to contribute the code to Mambo that was written for Furthermore and licenced under tight restrictions. BSD or GPL, Sakic would still argue that he rewrote entirely new code for Mambo.
Connolly still got his damn code in the first place, and since he isn't distributing it, the GPL as it applies to Furthermore is dormant (recall that the code Sakic modified for Furthermore was under the GPL). The GPL would only kick in if Connolly distributes Furthermore and if Sakic was not the original author, and thus would have had had no right to relicence the Mambo code.
Now, get off your soapbox.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings. I bothered to read the article, the responses (they both added comments to the Newsforge article), and some of the messages posted.
Some people seem to think that because Mambo is GPL, the code modifications must be released under the GPL. This is only true if Connolly distributes his application. If he keeps the code "within his walls" then he can keep his code changes private. When Emir put the code out there, that violated the GPL which allows Connolly to keep the code to himself in this special case. OK? So Connolly isn't a 100% whack-job.
But the next misunderstanding is on Connolly's part: his code is NOT in the Mambo codebase! Emir re-implemented the code, and gave it extra functionality. So the whole first misunderstanding is mostly irrelevant, because there is no copied code! And this is (I think) why Mambo keeps asking for more info and not getting it: if Connolly had to give line-by-line details of the violation, we would see that there is no line-by-line theft.
However, there is the third misunderstanding (or assumption). And that is that many people appear to assume that Emir clean-roomed this. He didn't. From everything I've read, Emir got sneaky: he liked the feature, he wanted it in Mambo, so he took the code he already wrote for Connolly, and tweaked the shit out of it so it looked different and better. And it really is different and better, but it's built right off what he had already done for Connolly. I don't know what to think about this part -- there is no law I know of that would address this clearly. It probably exists, but I don't know of it. And so I'm left thinking that Connolly is completely out of luck and has absolutely no case at ALL, but Emir behaved terribly, and I wouldn't want such a person working on my codebase.
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