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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."
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...at getting purposely slashdotted for the purpose of testing some new server-side app like CherryOS turned out to be?
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
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?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
we's gonna get ourselves a GPL violator!
Damien
Now we neeed a Cherry OS for Linux
Oh wait...
I have already covered it here.
http://www.winehq.com/?interview=14
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
The website mntions that its designed for the Bangladesh market. I went to college with a prince of Bangladesh. He screwed me over on our final project for physics. Didn't show up for the presentation, then claimed that he had done all of the work I presented. Unfortunate for him, he didn't relalise that I had been consulting the professor on a regular basis about the project. So it was obvious who was telling the truth. I'm not saying everyone there is corrupt. In fact, the only problem I had with the situation is that he didn't even offer me a bribe of any kind.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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.
Have you Meta Moderated t
They do have copyright law in Bangladesh -- they signed onto the Universal Copyright Convention. And they're WTO members, so that's even more restrictive when it comes to intellectual property.
"Ripping off" free software is actually worse because it confuses the message of free software. The message of free software is that free people can co-operate to make tools for themselves that work. A ripped free software tool with "improvements" directly undermines that message by trying to convince people that they need some closed software to make their lives easier. Typically, the ripped version is inferior but the money involved will create a stream of advertising that says otherwise. Public education on the value, cause and workings of free software is an ongoing project.
It is too bad that a lot of people confuse Open Source with Public Domain.
No, these bozos knew what they were doing and did not limit their "theft" to free software. They knew that they were violating licenses for free software just as much as they knew they were violating M$'s license by distributing their floppy driver. Since having the obvious string matches pointed out, they have tried to replace them without bothering to replace binaries or release source code. As the easiest thing to do would be to release source code, these people are up to no good and know it.
We shall see if they come clean. If they don't and M$ does not clean their clock, we can draw further conclusions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Microsoft Windows is the most acknowledged operating system throughout the world. But it is highly dominated artifact to the people and MS have a monopoly to our desktop. Due to the fact, EKUSH is a lineup effort to the Win32 platform, an alternative OS to run your existing windows applications. Our focus is to build the alternative platform; a brilliant Operating System for our community.
Now THAT is a professional blurb -- wait here while I get my credit card!
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Slow???
We have third party drivers loading, a explorer.exe clone, application support such as OpenOffice for Win32 loading not to mention we have made replacement apps for regedit, taskmgr, and a Windows like install system. Whats slow about ReactOS development?
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who is Ladesh and why does everyone say to bang her?
...There is a huge difference here. People don't download the latest *insert crappy pop artist here* and claim that they wrote that song.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
for fdc.sys. They'll stomp them but good. And we'll get GPL enforcement as a free side-effect!
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's not a clone, it's an OS that is trying to be Windows binary compatible.
You could say they're trying to make a better "Windows".
I know we all love linux here, but IMO the only way to take desktops away from MSFT is to replace them with something thats compatible: something that runs all the same apps and games and supports all the same hardware by way of the same drivers.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"You see you say open source is not the same as public domain. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG."
Uhh... only public domain is public domain. Open source is NOT the same as public domain. He's completely correct in this statement.
GPL, BSD, LGPL, etc. are different licenses, true... but none of them are public domain. Public domain refers to a work that has no license attached to it because it was either released to the public domain or the copyright expired.
Actually, with BSD, one of your only requirements is to give credit to the original creator. No royalties necessary, though.
No. The term "Open Source" is a trademark of the Open Source Initiative and/or Software in the Public Interest, and it has a very specific meaning.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Nothing is slow about it! Ignore the moron :) You guys are doing an awesome job and it's much appreciated. Please keep up the great work. I think the grandparent underestimates the challenge at hand. The fact that you guys are making the progress that you have seems amazing.
Regards,
Steve
Considering that NT was built on 10 years of development (NT4), and that ReactOS has only really been in steady development since 3/4 years, and that we already support some Windows 2003/Longhorn features, I wouldn't call it slow.
Best regards,
Alex Ionescu
Kernel Developer, ReactOS
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.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
The interesting thing is that this guy is not a stranger to OSS either, he's got a savannah account.
A picture of this con artist showing off the work of other's he's trying to take credit for: here
The related article says:
"Licensing is one of the problems the Ekush team is expecting to face. As the project is not based in the US, Ekush OS will not be able to obtain the license banner of General Public License (GPL), the US-based licensing company."
Showing that either Mr. Ranju or the journalist (or likely both) have little clue on the GPL.
The fact they went back to hide more 'evidence' clearly shows their intent.
Anyone can mess up ( 'we plan on releasing source',' we didnt mean to change said copyright text', etc ).. But clearly this isnt a screwup.
Looks like their site has been turned off by their hosting service.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?"
ReactOS may well be cool, but *UGH* they really need to find someone that knows how to write HTML.
I wondered why as I hovered over links the font size changed, cusing the entire page to flicker all over the place - then I found why:
From their page source:
meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"
Friends dont let Friends use MSFP
Just tried to hit the link for the Ekush site and got --
This Hosting Account is Expired/Suspended
If you are the site administrator click here to contact with Technobd.com
I'm on a chair.
Yeah, just like "Western Union", "Internet Explorer", "Lotus Notes", "Word", "Excel", "Access", "Windows" and lets not forget things that are similar, too, like "Lindows".
So, yeah, while I agree with your sentiment, deal with it. Don't take your anger out on "Open Source" of all things, try one of the others. "Windows" is always a good starting point. =P
they also derive code of (and are violating the rights of) Wine, FreeType and QEmu
Just a pit-nick; AFAIK FreeType is distributed under a license which does not require redistribution of source.
The BSD licence is nothing like Public Domain - with PD the ownership is transferred to the public. With BSD, the ownership (and hence any copyright entitlements associated with ownership) are still held by the author, except if copyright is assigned elsewhere (which is illegal in some areas). Even the much more permissive MIT licence - which says "you may do wtf you like with my software" - still implies control is retained by the original owner, and is not PD.
That's something I've wondered myself. Now, it's true that the two sets of people (those decrying GPL violations and similar, and those defending infringing copyrights on music and movies and similar) are not identical. However, for each article on each topic, there are a lot of highly-rated posts expressing each of those views, as appropriate. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that the consensus on slashdot is that infringing the GPL = bad, infringing movie/music/etc copyright = okay.
Me, I view all IP rights infringement as bad, unless there are strongly mitigating circumstances (by which I mean, people's lives are on the line), but I do feel myself to be in a minority here at times.
To all those of you reading this and thinking "but there are many views here!" that's true. But just look at the tones of the various articles, and the sorts of comments that get posted in response. Articles about the RIAA and MPAA suing filesharers for copyright violations always have a bias towards that being a bad thing, and yet we have articles taking companies to task for violating the GPL. Well, slashdot, you can't have it both ways, and no, predatory business practices and high prices don't excuse people infringing copyrights.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
WTF? In no way is BSD like public domain. Public Domain means that nobody owns the copyrights (or in that same token that EVERYONE owns the copyrights), or that the copyrights have expired.
BSD is a liscense, just like any other. BSD is completely unrelated to copyright, except in that if you follw the rules of the liscense you gain the ability to use those copyrighted works within the bounds of the liscense--just like the GPL. Liscenses are like chisels, and copyrights are like wood, and in this way they are completely unrelated excapt for the fact that their use is quite obvious. You use the tools at hand to shape the wood into the form you desire. That's the entireity of it.
If an author had complete ownership of the copyrighted material in question, he could liscense it in whatever fashion he wanted, even under mutiple liscenses, binary only liscenses, or what ever he desired. The ONLY ***only*** reason that BSD stuff can't usually become GPL stuff is the fact that so many people own the copyrights on it that it would be absolutely impossible to contact them all and ask for their (written) permission to use the code involved, and also the simple matter is that many people contribute to BSD stuff because it's BSD, and they wouldn't want to change liscense--meaning that you'd have to cleanroom engineer it all--talk about an excercise of futility.
If these people molested a BSD project in the same way they've molested ReactOS (not giving credit where credit is due, as per the BSD liscense) they'd be in just as much shit.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Are you trolling? I ask because you've conflated several issues which are utterly unrelated, and you besmirch "open source" as some sort of WareZ or SerialZ scheme. If you're not trolling, then it's clear you are ignorant of these subjects.
First of all, your first assertion--that "the wonderfulll world of open-source" somehow advocates stealing intellectual property is patently ludicrous. If you care to browse the mailing-list archives for nearly any open-source project, and ReactOS's in particular, you will find a very clear regard for copyright, such that any incoming code contributions are challenged to ensure no non-opensource code is accepted.
Second, you assert that opensource works have "no serious copyright of any kind." Forgive me for asking, but what the hell does that mean? Are you saying that copyright is somehow less valid when licensed under the GPL, when compared to run-of-the-mill garbage click-through or shrink-wrap "licenses"? If so, would you kindly back up this baloney with a factual example? In my experience, the GPL has received favorable enforcement when asserted against infringers in the past; is the same true for click-throughs?
Further, you seem to suffer under the delusion that authors of opensource software are the same individuals who "consider it legit to publish security keys, hacks to encryption algorythms" and so forth. This is utter garbage, again. I defy you to name a single ReactOS or Linux developer (credited by name in the source code) who is a WareZ kiddie.
Finally, the "repackaging" that the ReactOS team finds objectionable is only that this "Ekush" entity is merely removing attributions to the true authors, and redistributing ReactOS-derived software without adhering to the licensing terms under which ReactOS was distributed. I'm sure they could care less if Ekush properly forked the ReactOS code and released their own version while adhering to the ReactOS license, and might even support serious parallel efforts if done for a principled reason--the ability to code-fork is one well-known and universally-acknowldged BENEFITS of opensource. But what happened here is mere blatant piracy, with no attention heeded to the original license.
CLIFF NOTES: get your damn facts straight, stop attributing attitudes or positions to people which they never held, and learn the difference between opensource and warez, you tool.
Oh, damn, I've already run into a snag.
Anyone able to give me quick instructions on how to run a kernel compile? I've never done this before...
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Well, slashdot, you can't have it both ways, and no, predatory business practices and high prices don't excuse people infringing copyrights.
:) which supports infringing copyrights? It this perspective so out there that people have a hard time figuring it out for themselves?
Is it not possible that there's one group of posters and moderators who support not infringing the GPL, and a _totally different group_ (possibly a younger one
I mean, really, the parent post mentions that there are "many views here", but that information does not seem to be a part of the poster's thought process. Yes, "many views", or "two sets of people", does explain everything. Period. Yes, it is easier to think of SlashDot as some sort of unified intelligence than to think of a collection of people. But SlashDot is just a collection of people. Assigning opinions to SlashDot itself is sophistry. Who exactly is the "you" in "you can't have it both ways"?
I say that as someone who opposes both GPL infringment and file sharing. I exist, thank you!