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Beware of "Backspaceware"
SubLevel writes "Since conception in 2004, Paint.NET has been generously been offering the software community the taste of successful freeware, by allowing anyone to download and decipher the entire working of their extremely popular photo editing program. As posted in the Official Paint.NET blog by Rick Brewster, "Backspaceware" as he has so coined has become a tremendous issue. "Paint.NET's license is very generous, and I even release the source code. All free of charge. Unfortunately it gets taken advantage of every once in awhile by scum who are trying to profit from the work of others. I like to call this backspaceware*. They download the source code for something, load it up in to Visual Studio (or whatever), hit the backspace key over the software's name and credits, type in a new name and author, and re-release it. They send it to all the download mirror sites, and don't always do a good job covering up their tracks.""
I been have been good at proofreading.
to the solution to your problems.
Unfortunately it gets taken advantage of every once in awhile by scum who are trying to profit from the work of others
When there is profit involved, that is going to happen. If you can be scammed expect to be scammed. You just have to hope that users are informed and intelligent enough to realize who was really responsible for the software. Welcome to capitalism. If one can get away with it, one can make as much money as they want
I got a catholic block.
The majority of copyright licenses used for popular free software applications require people who redistribute the software to preserve the original author's copyright notice. Failure to do so is plagiarism, and the license treats plagiarism as copyright infringement.
This is a good reason to implement obfuscated C for things like the program name and author.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
The merging of Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses for resource files with GPL or MIT style licenses for the code is going to get interesting. Basically, it says "yo can do anything you want with this code, except this part right here, and the whole thing will fail to work without this part right here." At least, that's what I get out of the text...
Thomas Galvin
His "solution" to this seems to be to close the source for parts of the program, which is a major overreaction to this joker.
I don't think he should be worried - as long as his (the "genuine") program appears higher up in Google for the name and the important search terms, people will ignore the plagiarist.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
I've seen this a number of times, shady people who only want to make a quick buck or have entirely unrealistic expectations of what software development costs or how it's done. At the root of this problem are either the shady people trying to make a quick buck, or the shady freelancers trying to meet the requirements on a non-existant budget.
Lets take the average scenario:
- Shady person sees a piece of software and thinks they can make some money if they made their own.
- Shady person has no programming knowledge, so posts on rentacoder or similar.
- Because they have no idea of what software development entails, or in order to make money it must cost next to nothing.
- Shady freelancer or outsourcing business wins the bid.
- Shady freelancer re-brands an existing piece of software in a day and the job's complete.
Quite a few times this is down to freelancers knowing they can just re-brand an existing open-source project, or even the shady business knowing they can get it cheap if freelancers do that.
Some times they get lucky and their "product" gets more success than the original project, but it's origins are now hidden and will be forever because you can't just come clean 6-12 months down the line when it's making money.
I've long called this pump and dump software, companies or individuals trying to build up a large portfolio of software under a common brand covering the widest market possible in the remote hope that they'll profit from some.
Offer the source on the condition they don't change the name or remove the author. If they violate that, you sue.
It's usually called copyright infringement, if this guy is too stupid to assert his authorship rights... that's his problem.
What an asshole!
They have subsumed the "program" by re-assigning its identity.
What was once a program being passed around became a vestige of that person's ego.
If you're not adding features or fixing bugs, why bother, except to get recognition?
As a freeware author, reputation is all you can expect to get in return for your work. It's bad enough that so many ad-laden download sites exist which make users jump through hoops to get the actual file or find a link to the homepage, all the while bombarding them with banners and popups. Never mind that the file is usually available from the well-sorted homepage without a hitch. But now some people even rip you off for the attribution. Quite frankly, be thankful for every piece of freeware that is still out there, because most authors wouldn't take that kind of shit if they got paid for it.
This is of course no different than what can be done with a hex editor on a binary. Somehow, being able to see the source code gives a lot of people the sense that they can do whatever they want with it. There has always been that mistaken notion that source code is the keys to the kingdom; for example, companies take great pains from letting their source code leak out, especially to their competitors. There are rarely secrets contained in source code (except for Microsoft's NSA backdoors), and if a competitor got it, more power to them wasting their time trying to reverse engineer it.
But there's something new contributing to this perception, which is the general disdain for copyrights these days. It's the record companies' fault, of course, for withholding sales of digital audio during the entire dot-com boom. Now they're struggling to sell singles for a fourth the price they were selling for 25 years ago, adjusting for inflation.
People think they have an entitlement to commercial music, and they think catching a glimpse of the source code gives them full rights.
...is that changing the name of the author a breach of pretty much any lisence there is, as well as the general copyright law. I am aware of this happening alot, which is why i rarely release source code of my works, unless it is a project that took less than a day to write.
Pure awesomenes
Anyone know?
Do you still have all of your source files? Yes. Has anything been stolen? No. They're only 1s and 0s. None of those users were going to pay for support anyway. No harm, no foul.
Right?
Certified that this comment is not a cut and paste of another poster's comment. Well, as far as I know. And I don't know much.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Better not give that prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor any ideas. They might try to put CentOS out of business.
If you feel someone hasn't complied with your license, then enforce your rights.
Going closed source because of a license abuse of a single individual just shows Brewster wasn't serious about open source in the first place.
He's entitled to statutory damages of something like $150,000 per copy. He hit the jackpot.
I am a Slashdot participant. Information wants to be free. I can download other people's music and movies, and share them with millions of my friends via the Internet. Why can't somebody else do the same with software?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I spend a lot of time writing a PHP script for myself and decided to release it to the public. I think I threw a GPL notice on it but the source was included either way due to it being PHP. Well I put it up on my website and a few months later go back to update it. I search online and find someone selling it for $50. He refused to take it down when I asked him to which really added insult to injury. (He claimed he downloaded it from limewire therefore its fair game? wtf?) Considering he was actively advertised "his program" (mine with my name and stuff backspaced) he got a lot more people to download it then I did even though mine was free. I eventually got him to take it down by sending a cease and desist notice. (Thanks for the template RIAA)
This person was one of the named examples:
Ultra Software backspaceware
On the products page a number of applications have been "re-branded".
I would imagine Mr. Hardy is blissfully unaware whether anyone has noticed.
So if Paint.NET's entry somehow appeared lower in some search engine's rankings, writing and distributing non-free software would somehow be justified? No, it wouldn't, but only if you value software freedom for its own sake. This shows yet another instance of how different the free software and open source philosophies are: open source philosophy will lead to defending endorsing programs which don't qualify as open source (which, I take it, is the movement you advocate for since you refer to "closing the source").
If what you're saying is true, I will not recommend the use of Paint.NET because that program no longer respects its users software freedom. I will recommend The GIMP instead, even for people who find The GIMP to have far more features than they really need (as so many do with the proprietary Photoshop program).
Digital Citizen
If he doesn't like it he shouldn't be releasing the source under a license that permits it. Isn't the MIT license GPL compatible? And I know that with a GPL program you can do exactly what he is complaining about, as long as you release your source as well. Sure, no matter what the license there will be douchebags out there that will break it, but if your license allows something don't complain about it when it happens. And you don't like the ones that are breaking the license? Then don't release the source code. I know there are a lot of FOSS lovers here that will hate me for saying that but if it is your code and you don't want people using it then don't open source it.
I think rather than the problem be "I am not getting my due recognition and payment (if applicable)" is that someone else is taking all the time an effort of someone else which allows them to get the recognition and potentially payments if they incorporate a program they got for free and simply slap a $5 price tag on it.
Tell me about it. I post some really insightful comment in slashdot and somescum cut and paste it and post it as their own insight in other fora and blogs.
Certified that this comment is not a cut and paste of another poster's comment. Well, as far as I know. And I don't know much.
Corrected your title.
And to provide instruction to ones who will. You see, the GPL does not offer protection. Courts can. If you don't have the 'nads to go to court, you don't get protection.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/5/75
Just have a project so obscure or specialised that no bugger's going to think its worthwhile nicking in the first place. Like mine for instance /sob.
Actually licensing is the way to go. True no license will stop someone stealing it, but it will give you the right to send 'cease and desist' notices to any site hosting the offending code. Its very hard to spread a usurped version of a program if reputable download locations won't host it.
If FOSS was crap then nobody would want to distribute it. Do you think Vista would get redistributed if it was any good let alone free.
A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
This discussion makes me wonder if there is such a thing as "moral rights" in the US law. Let me explain : in France, the law gives you two sets of rights to protect your works. One is the "author rights" (droits d'auteur) and is the equivalent to US copyright law, ie, it expires some time after your death. The other set of rights is the "moral rights" (droits moraux), which are _inalienable_, and state that YOU are the sole author of the work and should be credited for it. So basically if you put your work in the public domain, and if someone distributes it and claims it as his own, under French law you can sue him. Is there such a protection in the US ?
People have done the same thing with both free and commercial software that has been released without source code. In some cases it's easier to "rebrand" the product with a bitmap editor and debugger than by putting together the needed compiler toolchain and recompiling it.
The recourse is the same, whether it's released in source code or not: you use the legal system. The problem with that is the same either way, too... and that is that the law is designed to make it easy for big companies to destroy individuals, not to allow individuals to protect their rights. But even with that caveat, there are steps you can take... I am not a lawyer, so I won't go into them, hopefully someone who is will post more useful details.
Incidentally, this is exactly why SugarCRM left GPL v2 to move to a proprietary license called the Sugar Public License which had an attribution clause in it. The community gave Sugar mad shit because they weren't "true" open source, but low and behold GPL v3 included that type of protection and all the sudden Sugar is back within the good graces of "true" open source software.
I'd sympathize. But considering their nazi-eqsue stance towards Windows 2000 (particularly posting about it in their forum), my response is: bugger off.
That was just plane and simply a stupid answer. The correct answer in places where lawyers separate us from justice is, "if you don't have the money to go to court, you don't get protection."
Unfortunately I probably rose to take the bait from a troll.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
You explain /exactly/ why my first stop for Windows "freeware" solutions is SourceForge, my second stop is Freshmeat, and my third is Google to look for an original author's site. Heck, I haven't even looked at Tucows in a couple of years. Problem solved. :)
To which Rick Brewster replied:
Comparisons to the relative success of individual closed source and FOSS solutions are clearly dependent upon the talents of the programmers involved. Therefore, Rick probably figures that keeping up with one or two other programmers won't be all that tough. However, what Rick forgets is that if enough developers do get interested in a particular FOSS project, he'll never be able to keep up. Examples abound of successful forks, after all. So, why try?
On another note and as someone else noted in the comments of the original story, why isn't he just sending DMCA takedown notices to this guy's ISP and to places like download.com? He could choke this off so quick it'd make that guy's head spin. I would also be truly poetic justice. :)
I somehow always knew ctrl + h would be the death of us.
The game.
I have a better term for this, "plagiarism".
Question everything
this is an obvious risk that's taken any time you give something freely to other people. what, it's free only as long as they do what you want them to do with it? that doesn't sound free at all. i'd suggest anybody who has an issue with opportunists taking advantage of an...opportunity to take a quick second to realize that nobody cares except the people who think like you, and if you want to force other people to act the same way the you and the group that supports you wants, you are simply bullying people into certain behavior. use your powers of 'communication' (foreign phrase, i know. i'm a sucker for obscure terms) to talk to the people who do things you don't want them to do. have an argument and see if anybody walks away with a change of opinion. these guys who are selling this software aren't going to be making critical updates to it. they won't be offering technical support or bug tracking, or anything else. if you concentrate on these issues you are taking away from time that could have been better spent on something else.
> Broken analogy. The injured software author in the article is not being impersonated.
No, you just missed it (most likely deliberately, but I'll give you the benefit of doubt: The analogy didn't went on "George Lucas" as a person, but on "George Lucas" as the creator of Star Wars.
I know I'm offtopic, I tried Paint.NET few times, it's pretty good for being opensource, but I still prefer Pixel image editor http://www.pixelimageeditor.com/ Well but now to reusing opensource code in some commercial packages. Isn't there license to protect their work? I there's anybody not following your license, you can sue him :)
Photoshop for Linux? Wine? No. http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Stop comparing me to oranges. kthnxbai
Uh, I thought this false rumor that Microsoft used BSD's TCP/IP networking stack had long ago been quashed. Neither the original Microsoft TCP/IP stack in NT/2000/XP/2003, nor the new one in Vista/2008, are based on BSD code. Both were written by Microsoft, from scratch. This rumor appears to have started since some of the socket code uses BSD header files (i.e. *.h files) for source-level compatibility with BSD socket code. I think some of the more simple TCP/IP utility programs may have also been based on BSD code, but I'm not sure about that. I am sure that the actual TCP/IP protocol stacks have nothing of BSD in them.
This happens with whole commercial sites as well. For example, a .com site may be illegally copied onto the .ru tld and every detail but the contact info be kept the same.
Oh, and of course it happens a lot in software companies as well... I would bet that 75-90% of all commercial closed-source software probably contains more than 500 lines of code that was copied from somewhere (FLOSS or otherwise) without a proper licence (GPL or other)... Perhaps that's why software companies don't easily open-source their stuff even though they know that the resulting popularity surge would bring in more profits (the fact that closed-source software is scientifically proven to contain orders of magnitude more bugs than open-source is probably also a reason).
There is a need for some kind of Document Registrar system, similar to copyright application, but not as cumbersome. Basically, you submit a document, such as source code, to a service to be recorded and time-stamped. It does not do much other than verify that person X submitted document Y on a given date and time. But that is enough to at least prove that you were the earliest to posses it.
Table-ized A.I.
It's a large site with good Google ranking and will make it more difficult for other sites to overshadow the original, free version.
Cutware.
Easier to say, phonetically sound, and more accurate. I mean really, who would backspace lines instead of just deleting them
So, I hereby trademark 'Cutware' and 'Deleteware'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Considering the solution to finding Internet plagiarism in college term papers, why can't the same type of check be made to uploaded source code. This problem has already been solved!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1. Download source code 2. Change author/program name 3. ?????????? 4. Profit!
no text
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
Isn't this was some BSD developers were claiming was being done to their code in the Linux kernel a while back?
So we put a return instruction at the end of the
title string, zeroed the registers and called the
first byte of the string. If the resulting
register contents weren't right, we executed
a halt instruction.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Nuff said
One can always represent themselves in court.
In 2004 my favourite backspacewares were Linspire IM Suite (a very old version of Gaim costing $30), Linspire Office Suite (an even older version of OOo1 costing $30), etc etc. I also loved the way they implied that all Linux distributions were primitive Gentoos where everyone was forced to compile everything with "/.configure, make, make install" and the scary command prompt spewing acres of gibberish. They seem to be distributing recent and correctly versions of these programs for free nowadays, but the casual slander of proper operating systems continues. (Names and numbers correct before being stored and retrieved by my memory...)