Ekush: A CherryOS For the Windows World?

GvG writes "Yesterday, Ekush version 0.10 was released (binary only, no source). Ekush is a relatively new attempt at cloning Microsoft Windows. The ReactOS project has the goal of creating a GPLed OS that is compatible with Microsoft Windows applications and drivers. The release of Ekush caused some uproar in the ReactOS community, since it soon became apparent that Ekush was not much more than a repackaged version of ReactOS. Doing a simple string search for ReactOS on the Ekush binaries showed a number of hits. (Read on for more.)

GvG continues "Shortly after this was reported on the ReactOS mailing list, the Ekush website went down "for maintenance". Today they are back with a slightly altered set of binaries, which no longer contain the ASCII string "ReactOS". However, they forgot to search for Unicode strings... Ekush is not only violating the rights of ReactOS by deriving a product without releasing the modified source, they also derive code of (and are violating the rights of) Wine, FreeType and QEmu."

Larry Snyder adds "Additionally, at the time of this writing, their binary floppy diskette driver appears to be a near exact copy of the Windows 2k pro fdc.sys driver, with the copyright string and header changed."

Comments

Why cant Comerical Enterprise respect IP Rights

[jellomizer]

It is too bad that a lot of people confuse Open Source with Public Domain. That is the problem with free software that is open source is that people feel compelled that they could use it to "Make" their own product without any form of recognition to the original developers. While I feel the GPL is strict on a lot of thing that it shouldn't be but just blatantly releasing a product that is based off an Open Source project with a different license is just wrong. I think there should be more education for the public that Free Software is not Public Domain and ripping off Open Source Work is just as bad a Pirating Closed Source Software. It is too bad that Commercial Enterprise doesn't respect IP Rights.

Re:Why cant Comerical Enterprise respect IP Rights

[minus_273]

well, its the same as people downloading music off the net. why cant people just respect the IP rights of artists? how about warez sites? Same mentality leads to both except one is not flamed as badly on slashdot.

Re:Why cant Comerical Enterprise respect IP Rights

[mpe]

well, its the same as people downloading music off the net. why cant people just respect the IP rights of artists?

Assuming these artists actually still have any IP rights...

how about warez sites?

Actually what is going on in these examples is non-commercial infringement. Whereas the company involved is enguaged in commercial infringement. Often the law provides stiffer penalties and stronger investigative/enforcement powers with respect to the latter.

Re:Why cant Comerical Enterprise respect IP Rights

[artifex2004]

However, you need to add this to the end of that to be complete: ...as long as how you make money has no negative impact on anyone including your competition.

This is also wrong. Let's say that a sandwich stand goes up on a street. It meets all the health codes, but the food quality isn't great, and it's somewhat wasteful of resources. It's also charging a premium because it's the only place nearby. A competing sandwich stand goes up, with better quality and better prices. It's also a more efficient user of resources, which means fewer negative externalities to the environment and society as a whole.

In this case, the second sandwich stand has a negative impact on the competition, by way of how it makes its money: providing better quality food at a lower price.

Your statement would limit public choice through the artificial barrier of right of first entry. It would certainly stifle creativity, forcing everyone to remain at the lowest common denominator of technologies, etc.

With me, so far? Okay, let's mix things up just a little bit more: the first stand is run by 5th-generation citizens who invented their regional accent and go to the local church, and the second one is run by recent immigrants who talk a bit funny and have prayer mats.

Should this have a bad impact on whether they are allowed to have that stand and push the others out of business because they can offer better quality at a lower price? No. Will it? You tell me.

Take this further, expanding it out to where the first stand uses local produce, and the second stand uses produce it gets from a farm it owns across the border... would that trigger the response that this sort of protectionism is good?

Enforced Dilution?

[torpor]

Could it be that these various randomly 'popping-up' projects, gathering press around the 'theft' of code from OSS projects, is part of a larger dilution strategy?

Always liked the ReactOS concept

[eltoyoboyo]

I have been distantly following the ReactOS project and even gave it a short test in a Virtual PC environment. It has a long way to go yet. It also has a tough uphill battle since you could (feasibly) purchase Windows NT and licenses on eBay and outfit yourself with the real deal, minus ongoing support from Microsoft.

So is this a fork in the code? And why would you do such a fork at such an early stage? I cannot see that there is any money to be made from ReactOS or EKush yet.

Report them to Microsoft

[The Wicked Priest]

for fdc.sys. They'll stomp them but good. And we'll get GPL enforcement as a free side-effect!

How dumb can they be?

[theparanoidcynic]

You'd think that, maybe, by the time they're compitent enough to even attempt to pull shit like this people would understand such "1337" tools as strings and grep.

Not only are they crooks they're no more than script kiddies . . . . .

I am the parent poster and I agree

[jellomizer]

I am the parent poster and I agree.
I develop custom software for a lot of companies and making sure that I follow the licenes is very dear to me because that way the company feels comfortable, with me and feels secure using the project. If I use a GPL Library I tell them that I am using a GPL library and if anyone want the source to this program you will have to release it to them. Which isn't an issue for most companies because their Data is far more important then the sourcecode use to manipulate it.

BTW.
I was actually making a little joke to conflect Microsoft and SCO who accuse Open Source Programmers not Respecting IP which is just the same gross generalisation.

Re:I am the parent poster and I agree

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Wrong. Have you read the GPL? See section 3b. If you do not distribute the source to the recipient of the binary, you must provide offer valid for any third party to request the source from you.

As a developer of custom software myself, it did not even occur to me that a client would accept an executable without full source too. I suppose such suckers do exist somewhere out there, so I'll give you that.

However unlikely such a hypothetical situation might be in real life, if the developer does not satisfy their obligation under section 3a (i.e. provide source to the client) then yes, the develoepr (not the client) would then have to provide source to anyone who asked for it, for three years.

Re:OT - Before you ask Why ReactOS

[isolation]

Not yet. Networking will be done at the end of the year and then I will. I use ReactOS quite a bit now but most of my time is still spent in Linux.

Re:Not Sure This Matters Beyound Principle

[drakaan]

You're confusing theft and fair use, I'm afraid.

In music/movies/etc...you are granted fair use rights to create archival copies of those movies or music. True, some go over the top and want communist music and movies, but that's not necessary to allow you to make an mp3 of a song on a CD you own.

In this story, there is an existing license available for others to be able to reuse some copyrighted material, but copying, in and of itself is not the problem. If the jackasses who stole the GPL'ed software had put the source code up for download (and given attribution to the original author and licensed their work under the GPL) there would be no problem with them selling as many copies as they wanted. What's at issue is that they are not creating copies in accordance with what fair use allows *or* with what the applicable license (the GPL) allows.

Interesting, my ass.

One thing your interview didnt say

[beuges]

Will reactos binaries work under ms windows? I see in another post you say you've got an explorer clone, and some other clones of windows programs. I'd imagine your binaries would have to be .exe's and .dll's. Would I be able to replace my explorer.exe with your's? Of course chances are there'd probably be some programs that won't like the change very much, but have you tried running your apps under ms windows, and how well do they work?

Re:One thing your interview didnt say

[isolation]

They do. In fact we develop quite a bit on Windows and then bring the applications over to ReactOS. explorer.exe taskmgr, regedit and quite a few of the drivers were developed on Windows as well as the Win32 libraries were ported from Wine back to Windows.

Slashdotted...

[ab384]

Site is either slashdotted or their hosting account has just expired.

You'd think hosting companies would by now have a special "bandwidth limit exceeded by hordes of people from ./" page to put up to ./ requests, and just let "normal" traffic through...

scary

[jonathanduty]

May just be me, but its scary to hear the phrases "cloning Microsoft Windows" and GPL in the same context. Seems like we are just creating a door for legal problems.

Re:We need lawyers on our side!

[k98sven]

You don't know what you're talking about.

If a developer doesn't want to enforce OSS license terms himself, he can always assign the copyright to somone who will. Such as the FSF (for GPL project) or the Apache foundation (for Apache-licensed projects) and so on.

The fact that the FSF hasn't actually been to court over a GPL violation isn't because they don't do anything, but rather because they're so successful at it that violators have chosen to settle instead.

Besides, what business is it of yours to ask lawyers to defend the copyright of a third party?
What if the developer/copyright owner himself doesn't care about the violation? It's nobodies business but his.

How can you claim damages on something that is free to the public to use and distribute? What is copyright violation worth when the software has no value in dollars?

This is also ridiculous. The software has value in dollars. If it didn't, there would be no point in ripping it off in the first place.

Try this: "What is the cost of commercially developing something with equal functionality?"

About every possible song is already copyrighted

[tepples]

Except that a lot of people argue that file-sharers aren't claiming that the music they are sharing is their own work, and therefore it is not copyright violation either.

In some cases, it may be more likely that you infringe when you share your own musical work. Some claim that the incumbent music publishers have snapped up the copyrights in almost every possible melody in the Western musical system, making any independent work an infringing derivative work.

In addition, the definition of "theft" in some states includes the copying of a sound recording without permission and with intent to distribute.

The difference between software and music/movies

[tepples]

What's that I keep hearing around here when music and movie copyrights are violated, "it's not stolen

The difference is that courts tend to interpret the exclusive right to prepare derivative works much more broadly for "creative" works, such as musical works, sound recordings, dramatic literary works, and audiovisual works[1], than for "functional" works such as computer programs. Analogy is as if Microsoft could copyright the Windows API, making Wine an infringement, or if Xerox and Apple could copyright the Mac OS GUI, making Windows and X11 environments an infringement. It's easier to avoid infringing a copyright on software (especially compared to music), so Slashdot users tend to regard such a violation as more egregious.

[1] If you aren't familiar with copyright law terminology, the respective digital embodiments of these classes of works are MIDI files, Ogg Vorbis files, movie scripts in a markup language, and AVI files.

Re:Major question for Slashdotters

[booch]

I think I can shed some light on the seemingly contradictory ideals that many folks hold regarding violation of GPL versus music "piracy".

First, very few of the pro-music-"piracy" folks believe that it's OK to sell the music they "steal" for money. Their main arguments are that the prices music companies want to charge are artifically inflated; and until recently, the music companies did not even offer legal copies of the music in the formats that the listeners were using. Also, many music downloaders (myself included, when I was on Napster) consider the P2P sharing a way to discover new music by "borrowing" a copy. Personally, my Napster usage caused me to buy several more CDs than I would have otherwise.

Second, the GPLed code is available for no cost already, so there's no money-saving incentive to break the GPL. Instead, those who purposely violate the GPL are causing something to be less free, while collecting money for it. Also, passing off someone else's work as your own is an additional moral infraction, beyond just re-distribution.

You could almost characterize it as "stealing from the rich" versus "stealing from the poor". Even if you agree that "pirating" music is wrong, you're still likely to agree that stealing from the poor is a more reprehensible action. And people have always gotten bent out of shape by sellers trying to pull a fast one on consumers.

Conversely, you could argue that music "piracy" is actually causing monetary harm to the IP owners, which is potentially damaging to their livelihoods. (I.e. it's worse to take money away from someone than to profit from something that was previously free.) But I think those who support music "piracy" believe that the monetary damages are minimal, if not outweighed by the benefits to the IP owners. Heck, even the music studios are aware of and take advantage of the benefits.

Easy to explain.

[twitter]

Why is it theft when it comes to GPL OSS programs, but it's suddenly NOT theft (instead, it's a "culture revolution") when it comes to taking music and movies from p2p networks?

What you see here is a cry for equal enforcement of copyright law. If I can be stripped of my life savings and companies can be fined hundreds of millions of dollars and put out of business for copyright violations, then the people behind ekush should be forced to do as the current owners of the software demand. It just so happens that people who "own" GPL'd software are not as asinine when it comes to their demands, so the remedies are simple: release the code or pay the authors. You will find me recommending p2p music "theft".

Read Lessing's Free Culture for an understanding of how the radio, recording and movie industries all "pirate" content. The only way anyone could think the current copyright mess is legitimate is if they believe in a command economy as many of the "IP" rights are stripped from performers and composers in favor of price controls.

The GPL is a mechanism to undermine software copyrights and the closed source model. The makers of the GPL think those things are abusive, but were clever enough to make an instrument that relies on the power of copyright law. Use of free software directly ends the user's abuse by closed source companies but indirectly fixes copyright laws. When the revenue for abusive companies like Microsoft dries up, they will be less able to purchase laws for themselves and copyright laws can return to something less intrusive and dangerous.

Lessing's creative commons will do much the same thing for entertainment and all of this AM radio empire bullshit will be long forgoten as programmers, composers and performers all make livings without as many nasty middle men.