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.""

Comments

Proofreading

[kmac06]

I been have been good at proofreading.

Let me introduce you

[0xdeadbeef]

to the solution to your problems.

Re:Let me introduce you

[pkadd]

Regardless of the lisence, people still breach it by making backspacewar eof it. I've seen it happend to alot of my work, which is why i avoid making it opensource unless people ask for it, or when it's a project i don't really care about. I don't make much commercial software, although i like to keep my name on my work to receive credit where credit is due.

Re:Let me introduce you

[JesterXXV]

If you RTFA, you'll see that this guy violated Paint.NET's current license, so putting a different license in there would solve absolutely nothing.

Re:Let me introduce you

[ucblockhead]

If he were to GPL it, he could assign the rights to the FSF, which has things like lawyers and such whose job it is to go sue people for violating licenses.

Re:Let me introduce you

[TopherC]

If you RTFA, you'll see that this guy violated Paint.NET's current license, so putting a different license in there would solve absolutely nothing.

But the GPL has been "tested" in court, while Paint.NET's current license has, I assume, not been yet. Also there are organizations that will help you in court if it's a GPL violation. So in part it's a matter of practicality, not principle.

Also Paint.NET should consider exactly how they want legitimately derived works to happen. If the GPL prevents certain kinds of derived works that they might like to see others create, then it's not the right license on principle.

Hmm, currently they're using the MIT license, which is extremely permissive. I don't even see a prohibition against re-branding and re-crediting in the license. So it's not obvious to me that the current license is being violated. Perhaps it is and I'm just not seeing it because IANAL. Anyway, consider that the current license provides next to nothing in terms of protection, and that's what the authors chose. The GPL provides substantial protection against abuses, and if paint.net wants to whine, they should "sublicense" (which is explicitly permissible under the MIT license) first to demonstrate that they really don't want this stuff to happen. The MIT license looks to me like a big "kick me" sign.

Re:Let me introduce you

[0xdeadbeef]

Except the GPL has a posse, and GPL violations generate far more publicity than just some guy getting ripped off. Corporations are scared of it for a reason.

Copyright clauses are hardly a license. If he cares so much about plagiarism that he's now crippling the source, maybe community ownership is preferable to controlling a string with his name in it.

Re:Let me introduce you

[man_of_mr_e]

Umm.. no. The GPL has not been tested in court. At least, not in the way you are implying. It's true that there have been a number of lawsuits against violators of the GPL, but every one of these has resulted in a settlement out of court. There has never been any decision by a court that explicitly upholds the GPL.

There is a lot of weight to the argument that a large number of settlements effectively make it "tested", but that's only really a probability, not a fact. Until such time as a decision is handed down by a court, upholding the validity of the GPL, and assigning damages to the copyright holder (either monetary or injunctive), there will still be a question.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Albanach]

Umm.. no. The GPL has not been tested in court. At least, not in the way you are implying

I'm sure some courts would disagree, as would those who have won compensation in court for GPL violations.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Anonymous Coward]

What, so stallman can take the credit and get the benefits? In Stallmanland, Backspace brings up online help because that's the most intuitive thing it can do - everyone knows C-h should bring up help. Your keyboard is broken and you should throw it way and get a different one. The software in the article should have been called Deleteware or better still delete-backward-charware to avoid any ambiguity. Get your terms straight next time.

Re:Let me introduce you

[cheater512]

IMHO it doesnt matter that its untested.
Its pretty damn rock solid and it would be incredibly unlikely that a court would side with the defendant.

Re:Let me introduce you

[AJWM]

The reason for that is that the GPL is a license which lets you make copies.

If somebody infringes it, the copyright holder sues the copier, and the copier's only defense is the license granted by the GPL, otherwise he has no license to copy and is in violation of copyright laws. The GPL hasn't been "tested in court" because if the case goes to court, it is in the defendant's interest to show that the GPL is valid and that he's been following it. (The only other option would be to somehow try to prove that the GPL is equivalent to putting something in the public domain, and that argument just won't fly.)

Usually it doesn't take long for the plaintiff's lawyers to point this out to the defendant's lawyers, and the defentdant's lawyers to point this out to the defendant, and for them all to quickly come to some settlement.

And actually, the GPL has been tested in court in Germany, and found to be perfectly valid.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me introduce you to the problem - Michael J Hardy. Read this lovely tale and see how little the license will help: http://youfailit.net/?p=49

Re:Let me introduce you

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. no. The GPL has not been tested in court. At least, not in the way you are implying

I'm sure some courts would disagree, as would those who have won compensation in court for GPL violations.

Since when do court cases in other countries mean more than a bucket of spit here in the USA?

Re:Let me introduce you

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of the lisence, people still breach it by making backspacewar eof it.

Any license? Oh, but I think I have the solution. Have you seen my new "Greg's Public License"? I think it's quite innovative.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, several of the Supreme Court Justices have cited cases from other jurisdictions in their opinions. The citations are to the legal or ethical reasoning, not to the precedent, of course. In the sense of precedent, cases in foreign jurisdictions get less consideration than a bucket of spit in U.S. courts (a bucket of spit could conceivably get in to the courtroom as "Exhibit A", a foreign precedent won't).

But if you get a good judge, he might just crib parts of his opinion from a well-written opinion by a foreign judge.

Re:Let me introduce you

[moosesocks]

But the GPL has been "tested" in court, while Paint.NET's current license has, I assume, not been yet. Also there are organizations that will help you in court if it's a GPL violation. So in part it's a matter of practicality, not principle.

That, my friend, is FUD. Even though it's a tactic generally condemned by the Free Software, RMS and his FSF cronies occasionally drag it out to promote their cause.

Free and Open-Source software is fantastic, although too-liberal licenses can often leave developers with a somewhat bad taste in their mouths for reasons such as this. The Paint.Net source code was released expressly for academic purposes, and it's a shame to see the license being abused in such a manner.

I'd love if some sort of creative commons license for source code could be developed so that developers could easily choose how they would like their software to be used/modified/redistributed. Although a completely free license is "perfect", developers have more than a few reasons not to go the whole way....

Re:Let me introduce you

[Yvanhoe]

You probably meant this

Re:Let me introduce you

[gazbo]

It's more than "pretty close". Read RFC 2119.

Re:Let me introduce you

[ubuwalker31]

According to the Author of Paint.NET, he is not closing the source code. He is still releasing the source code but not publishing the source code for the installer and "translated string resource files".

Also, the Author has thought about the GPL, but "Some have suggested that I should have used the GPL or BSD license, but that wouldn't be possible because first, I don't like GPL (let's please not start a battle about it). Second, it would restrict some of the freedoms that I do want to allow: honest incorporation of portions of Paint.NET's code into another software without licensing stipulations (for starters). Third, I don't have complete executive privilege here. Portions of Paint.NET are incorporated from elsewhere (with permission of course), or are even owned by Microsoft from way back in the day, and I cannot change those parts of the licensing without consent (or by doing a full rewrite). Nor do I want to chase everyone down to get this consent when I can achieve my goals easier by doing something else. So I have moved the resource assets to a CC license which means if you really want to rip-off Paint.NET then you have to rewrite all the text and redo all the graphics. At that point you have proven you are either not lazy, or that you have OCD, or something. By which time I've released 4.0 and you are way behind again."

Re:Let me introduce you

[arashi no garou]

Well just so you know, I wouldn't buy a damn thing from someone with www.vumit.com as their homepage on Slashdot. That's just sick, man.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Creepy]

The GPL is not the solution to all problems. You can't link to GPL without becoming GPL, so if you want to offer a non-commercial library other people can use, even commercially, you're out of luck. This is important for some libraries that want to be universally accepted and not have a wide range of variants, such as zlib and libjpeg.

    So you say LGPL - LGPL is valid ONLY for dynamically linked libraries. Plugins are not valid by the GPL or LGPL license unless the parent app has the same license, even though there are many plugins that say they're LGPL that work with commercial software. The problem is a plugin can declare itself LGPL, be downloaded and installed by a non-LGPL app WITHOUT RESTARTING the app and by the wording of the LGPL, the parent app has thus violated the LGPL. In effect, you could make commercial software violate the LGPL by just making an LGPL plugin for it, and that most certainly wouldn't hold up in court. The LGPL people were notified of this during license ratification and decided plugins were not supported by the license unless the license for the app was the same as the plugin.

    I'd love a license that falls in-between the LGPL and BSD, since I'm from the old school of freeware developers that write open source for a hobby and don't care if it's used commercially, though I'd like to get credit if the application or library is used. Repackage and sell it commercially? Fine, as long as I'm credited. I'd also like the buyer to know the software included is freely available online and that you're paying for packaging and maybe manuals (similar to commercial linux distributions).

Re:Let me introduce you

[Warbothong]

Regardless of the license indeed. That's because this is NOT a copyright issue, it is a plagiarism issue. Passing someone else's work off as your own is illegal. The fact that it is licensed permissively with publicly accessible source code doesn't affect that, except that it makes changing the program easier (although ways exist to do it for binaries, or of course things could just get embedded in a new frontend and no credit given). I hate to admit it but RMS's crusade against 'Intellectual Property' is right, as ever, since issues like this get confused due to the muddied waters (yes, permission COULD be given to do such a thing in a copyright notice, but it could also be given elsewhere). I was talking to my ex, who is very talented with loads of instruments and currently studying a music course, and I was saying that instead of deleting her recordings after projects, experiments, rehearsals, etc. are over that she could upload them somewhere under a permissive type of license like CC Attribution (I prefer the public domain, but got to start somewhere). She said that she wouldn't, she'd only use a restrictive no-copying-allowed kind of license because she didn't want people passing off her work as their own, and I still haven't convinced her that such a thing is actually plagiarism and doesn't depend on the license, plus that CC-BY requires attribution in any derivitaves and is just as enforcable as any 'traditional' (ie. corporate) license. Ah well, I'll keep trying :)

Re:Let me introduce you

[Raenex]

That's because this is NOT a copyright issue, it is a plagiarism issue. The easiest way to defend the work is via copyright. I did a quick search, and I can find no explicit law against plagiarism. Wikipedia has some stuff on it. The best defense in the United States against plagiarism seems to be through a special case of trademark law: reverse passing off. There's an interesting (but old) paper on how this might apply to electronic information.

I'll state again: The best defense is to use copyright, and not "plagiarism".

Re:Let me introduce you

[Raenex]

LGPL is valid ONLY for dynamically linked libraries. Plugins are essentially dynamically linked libraries. The intent of the LGPL is clear: You should be able to modify the library and use the modified version with the non-LGPL work. Plugins let you do that. You "link" to the plugin. As long as you can relink to a modified plugin, the license is satisfied.

The problem is a plugin can declare itself LGPL, be downloaded and installed by a non-LGPL app WITHOUT RESTARTING the app and by the wording of the LGPL, the parent app has thus violated the LGPL. No way. Who is violating the LGPL? Surely not the author of the program, unless he is the one distributing the LGPL'd plugin. Is it the user of the software, the one who initiates the download? Can't be, unless he himself redistributes the LGPL'd plugin.

Repackage and sell it commercially? Fine, as long as I'm credited. You are aware of the "advertising" clause that was removed from the BSD license because of the problems it caused, right? Also, the BSD license states that the license must be included, which includes the copyright owner, so you have your credit.

Re:Let me introduce you

[man_of_mr_e]

You kind of miss the point I was trying not make. I was not arguing that a court case could allow unrestricted distribution of GPL derived works. I'm more arguing that, should the GPL be found invalid, Millions of people will suddenly be violating copyright law, and that's a pretty substantial consequence to put on the shoulders of an untested license.

Let's say you create a product, such as a router. You comply with the terms of the GPL, and you produce 10,000 of these devices. Then, one day, the GPL is invalidated, and suddenly you're liable for every one of those routers you shipped. Not only that, but your customers could turn around and sue you as well.

I agree that it's pretty unlikely that could happen, but then again it's the principle of the thing that makes the GPL what it is, right?

Re:Let me introduce you

[AJWM]

No, copyright law doesn't work like that. Even in the improbable event of the GPL being found not to license what it clearly seems to license, the copyright holder would still have to take action to sue the accidental infringers. Presumably they wouldn't, since they intended to license the copying in the first place.

If some did (or more likely their avaricioius heirs and successors), one could likely argue that, at the time you made the copies, you and the copyright holder both believed the GPL to be a valid license and various doctrines (laches, estoppel, etc) hold.

Re:Let me introduce you

[man_of_mr_e]

That's why I said you would be "liable". No, you're not automatically going to have problems, and you're right that the author could well issue you a new license. However, there are a lot of authors out that have used the GPL in the past and have been trying to find ways reverse that. Many authors have removed their original versions from the GPL, leaving forks still out there. Those people could, if they wanted to, use such an opportunity to reclaim all the GPL code out there, and make some money in the process.

Yes, this is all a lot of "what if", but that's precisely what a license is there to avoid. If you wanted to leave the fate of your products up to "good will" then you wouldn't need a license at all. Everyone would simply use others code while trusting they would never get sued.

And yes, it's possible you could argue various copyright defenses, but there's no guarantee they would hold up. This hasn't been tested either.

My point is simply that until the GPL is truly tested in the US, there's a risk involved with the GPL that doesn't exist with less restrictive licenses like the BSDL or Apache. How much of a risk that is, that's hard to determine. Probably not much of one, especially for non-commercial uses, but do you want to bet your business on it? I wouldn't. I won't use GPL'd code in any commercial product.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Creepy]

According to LGPL people, plugins must use the same license, so you can't create an LGPL plugin for commercial software.

Specifically, I'm referring to this clause:
1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version.

the keywords are "already present" and "at runtime" - since a downloaded and dynamically installed plugin is not already present at runtime, this would violate the LGPL if it were used before the application was restarted.

Whether it's enforced or not, the wording is clear - the library (in this case plugin) MUST be on the system before the application is started. It's possible clause d0 could be used instead of d1, but I remember that being an issue, as well (it uses section 6 of the GPL). The LGPL people, as I recall, didn't think it would be an issue because the LGPL is for dynamically linked libraries, not applications or plugins.

Re:Let me introduce you

[Raenex]

According to LGPL people, plugins must use the same license, so you can't create an LGPL plugin for commercial software. Do you have a cite for this?

uses at run time a copy of the library already present on the user's computer system So the software, at runtime, installs the plugin. It then loads and uses the plugin. The user then needs a way to modify the plugin that was installed on the system. License satisfied, both in spirit and technically.

Operation as normal

[explosivejared]

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

Re:Operation as normal

[BlueParrot]

Welcome to capitalism. If one can get away with it, one can make as much money as they want

That isn't a feature of capitalism, it's a feature of human nature. Yes, it does mean you can't blindly trust a capitalist system from sorting everything out, but it is the very same principles which causes communist countries to go corrupt, and it is also why extreme liberalism will be taken advantage of by those who have the power/influence/money whatever to game the system.

Corruption isn't a matter of how governance is organised or how you set prices in your economy, it is a matter of transparency, openness and people being held responsible for their actions. If that does not apply it matters fuck all what economic system you use, you will just get different people screwing you over.

Now before people start suggesting direct democracy or some far-fetched ideal about having every company democratically controlled by the workers, you need to take into consideration that for democracy to work you need a transparent electoral system you can trust. Thus it still boils down to government transparency and people being slapped when they break the rules. There is no way around that.

Re:Operation as normal

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG! The MARKET solves ALL problems! Communist!

Re:Operation as normal

[skeeto]

If you can be scammed expect to be scammed

The only scam here is the removal the copyright notices, not the profit. The Paint.NET guys gave permission for anyone in the world to make money selling their software. Legally, this is simple copyright infringement. Nothing new here.

Unfortunately it gets taken advantage of every once in awhile by scum who are trying to profit from the work of others

Looks like Rick Brewster doesn't understand the MIT license, under which Paint.NET is distributed. Besides it not being "freeware" as stated in TFA, the MIT license allows anyone to sell the software and re-brand it however they want (while preserving copyright notices). I believe there is a name for "scum" who do this: Red Hat.

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

Lol.. It isn't that the market solves all problems. It is that it doesn't it better then government poking around creating other messes. Given the opportunity, I would rather the market sort it out over some regulation and constant interference that does little to address the problems and ends up raising the bar for entry.

That in and of itself isn't a complicated process. The government has managed to screw up about everything they have attempted to manipulate. It is the reason why you whiners are complaining about big business in the first place. What seems to be complicated is why you don't understand that and why you attribute it to Fox News viewers only. It clearly stretches beyond Fox news viewers, unless you are attempting to claim they are more informed and up to snuff on matters?

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

The reason they don't get it is because you cannot infer anything like that from what I said.

You see, we are not regulating knives. We are making acts illegal and it just so happens that you can use a knife to do it. If you stab someone, you won't be charged with using a knife improperly. You will be charged with felonious assault with intent or some form of murder unless your actions fall within a generally accepted exemption like self defense. But in either case, it isn't regulating a knife.

And I find your "you pretend the knife of only used to stab" comment a little misleading. It isn't the Fox News viewers who are claiming guns are used only to kill therefor we need to outlaw possession of them.

So basically, from your insighful coment, I can gather that you are laughing for the sake of laughing because you are the ones who got something misinterpreted and somehow think it makes fun of the people that you are misinterpreting. How quaint.

BTW, I don't watch fox news, I don't even have cable TV, if it isn't broadcasts, I don't dick with it. So lets watch the "you" in your statements before you end up once again misinterpreting things. And to keep with this "you misinterpret everything" theme, I didn't say anything about fox viewers in themselves, I asked why you thought it would be limited to fox news viewers only. Of course you didn't answer that question, you just regurgitated some opinion as if it was a fact of some sorts and pretended it was relevant to the conversation.

You must be laughing right now, I know I am. I guess I will never understand the joy of being wrong and thinking I am right then poking fun at other because of it. Tell me, it is overrated or do you enjoy the experience? I have an idea, Why don't I ask you what 2+2 equals and you can tell me 5 then make fun of me because I didn't know the answer. Well, I will try it with someone else so I can understand what it is like walking ten steps in your shoes.

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

Do you actually think about what your replying to or is this imbecilic nature of yours purely reactionary? I can see your sticking to the "misinterpreting everything" theme and you seem to be proud of it.

I never said that regulation is bad or "bad period". How you ever brought that into the mix I will never know. I said that the market can sort things out better then government interference can. But lets go back and let me show you exactly what I said so you can reference it. I know the Parent link is broke on your computer or you would have already looked at it and not posted that reply.

Here we go, I said "It isn't that the market solves all problems. It is that it doesn't it better then government poking around creating other messes. Given the opportunity, I would rather the market sort it out over some regulation and constant interference that does little to address the problems and ends up raising the bar for entry. and The government has managed to screw up about everything they have attempted to manipulate. It is the reason why you whiners are complaining about big business in the first place.

Ok, so I messed some of the wording up in the first statement, I will fix that for you right here so even you can fully understand the concept. Lets go line by line in bullet style points.

• It isn't that the market solves all problems.
  • OK, get this, The market doesn't solve all problems
• It is that it doesn't it better then government poking around creating other messes.
  • OK the market fixes things better then the government does. Wait for the next line, I explain why.
• Given the opportunity, I would rather the market sort it out over some regulation and constant interference that does little to address the problems and ends up raising the bar for entry.
  • IF I had a choice, I want to see the market sort things out before the government fucks everything up. And yes, that is exactly what the and constant interference that does little to address the problems and ends up raising the bar for entry means. That the government in it's attempt to regulate something will result in constant interference that does little to address the problem sufficiently enough to correct it and it will only result in the bar being raised for entry. Or in other words, It makes it more difficult for competition to come in and fill the gap in whatever the problem is.
• The government has managed to screw up about everything they have attempted to manipulate.
  • Ok, I figured this was self explanatory but here goes the dumbed down version for the people who want to present themselves as being smarter then they are by a considerable factor. When the government attempts to regulate something, they screw it up. Do you understand that? They screw it up. Look at the DMCA or the FCC, Take a gander at the Ma bell breakups, or hell, look at Microsoft and the anti trust shit. They get little right, think they are doing something and in the end leave us worse off.
• It is the reason why you whiners are complaining about big business in the first place.
  • Ok, this shouldn't be too hard to understand. But here we go. The government has screwed things up and now we have mega corporations that have more political pull then the average citizen does. And this was directly out of government regulation on the type of influence they could have.

So you see, Nothing went over my head, you simply failed to address anything I mentioned and decided that you had to insert your comments that were designed as snide insults that really showed your ignorance. Hell, you couldn't even understand the message and automatically started inserting things to make your point. The "Fox News types" must be a step up from you, at least they can follow a fucking story line and pay attention enough to find out what the problem was. As I said in the last post, You never did address what I asked, you just inse

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

This is some great stuff. First of all, the knife analogy did go right over your head when you started going off about liberals and guns. That much is obvious to anyone reading this

once again, misinterpretation. When will you learn to just read before you assume something?

The comment about the guns was the same as your comment about the "Fox news types". Who are the people wanting to go all the way because guns are bad? It is the exact same thing as you attempted to explain away in your second post to me. Well that is assuming that you are the same AC. Why is it so hard for you to grasp things? it isn't complicated.

You are willing to admit the market isn't perfect, which is nice, yet you seem to make an absolute claim that the market handles things better than the government. You aren't willing to attribute anything good to government regulation.

Willing to admit?I never said it was perfect. Sure there are problems sometimes in the market. The entire point of my posts was that it can fix itself better then government regulation can and that government regulation will screw it up. So am I willing to admit something that was the premise of the entire original post? Sure.

Look at food labels and what they can do for people who care what they eat, for people with allergies or miscellaneous digestive system problems. It is a big win. I'm glad the government regulates that. There are calls to change the labeling everyday because it isn't sufficient for one group or another. They want labeling bigger, different values, this and that. It is far from perfect and certain foods are exempt. Plus it creates a burden on smaller organization that raised the bar for entry because of the added costs. It is far from a big win.

But this isn't the interference we are talking about. This deals with health and safety, it isn't "the market" for food. And yes, those are separated from the "market". I'm sure you understand this as you have understood everything else so far. Why don't you give an example that actually deals with "the market" or a market.

A rational person can see that markets are best left alone until things go wrong, and then the government should come in and right the situation. It really is that simple. When the market works, let it work. When it doesn't, let the government fix it. Do you understand this, or do you think the government is always inferior to market forces?

A rational person? I suppose you would consider yourself rational when you couldn't even interpret the content of a simple post correctly. Sure there are times when government intervention might be necessary, but I highly doubt you can tell when that is. Often the market can clear the problem up a lot cleaner then governments can. This is because governments don't address the problems, the address the symptoms much like a doctor does when you have the flue. And by doing so, the skip some of the most fundamental aspects of the situation and usually end up screwing something else up. Then they have to fix that and it goes on in a vicious cycle. Often the paint with an overly broad stroke that restrict something fundamental and leave open ended avenues that eventually become exploited by established participants. The cuts out many upcoming competitors.

And yes, to more directly answer your question, I do believe that the government with fuck things up worse then letting the market sort it out on it's own. But no, that's not to say that the government cannot make something better, the question then lies within who does it make it better for? Because their answer it to take something from one entity and give it to another. It doesn't matter if you believe that is a fitting actions or not, because I don't. It an entity is in the market, whatever that market is, then they bare the risks of their actions. If that causes people to buy the food with the labels a certain way, then that would b

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

Knife analogy turned liberal gun banning = over your head in my opinion, or by your admission off topic at best.

Off topic yes but it seems that it went over your head even more. You are attempting to say that there is a group of people who think something is all or nothing and there is no middle ground. You want to call these people the "fox news types". I brought up the liberal "ban all guns" no middle ground types to show this isn't limited to fox news viewers. More original position was why are your limiting this to "fox news viewers".

So trust me, I got it, you didn't.

My argument is against FOX news types who think the market is always good and government regulation is always bad. So yes, it is good that you are willing to admit that the market can fail. I was trying to give you props over the more extreme people before I stated our differences. Relax man.

And your argument is fallacious. In other words completely wrong. There are people outside Fox news viewers that have the same belief. And to some extent, they are on your side.

Nothing stays the same, that's life. I know conservatives want to keep the USA in the 1950s, but trust me on this, change is not necessarily a bad thing.

sure nothing stays the same. But the changes being asked for are all over known issues at the time the labels were designed and mandated.

HAHAHAHA you fucking psycho nutjob loony toon. If a company doesn't know what is in the food it is selling, it shouldn't sell it. Period. If it knows what is in the food it sells, it can save a chunk of the labeling IT NEEDS TO HAVE AND MARKET FORCES DEMAND (I'm sure you know the importance of visual appeal, advertisement, etc) to put a little nutrition facts box. It isn't like the amount of ink required to put that there will bankrupt anyone. It isn't like the spot would have been left blank to save ink money.

You really mis out on knowing things because you think you know it all. Do you really think every company is a large company? How about the little old lady who's granddaughter wants to market Granny's cookies to pay her way through college? Or maybe she wants to start a company to compete with the large corporations like Nabisco. Lets say she can produce the cookies at a rate of 23 cents a piece. And she want to bundle 4 together and sell them for $1.25 to the store that would resell them for $2.00 a set. Now she has to go out and calculate the calories, break down all the ingredients, and flour, eggs, sugar and chocolate chips won't be enough, she has to list the ingredients of the chips too. She has to calculate a nutritional value for the portion size and list them. So now she has to get a printer and some form of wrapper she can print on, so here goes a bunch of expensive machines when all she needed in the first place was some baggies and a marker.

You don't think this matters? I live in Amish country and we have a lot of Amish farms that sell goods to the public. You can get sausages, baloneys, chesses, pies, and so on. So now you have dirt farmers who have religious convictions to not use modern equipment breaking their backs for a measly profit that barely pays the land taxes that had to send samples off and have all the ingredients and nutritional values calculated, order labels and have them shipped just to stay in business. of course a bunch of us chiped in and paid to get is started years ago because not only do we get the stuff given to us free, we also buy it and use it every day. Your not going to get stuff much better then that. And if you think so, go taste one of their dutch apple pies with the crumb stuff on it.

So there are two very real examples of what you can laugh at.

Everyone gets too see the nutrition information, the consumer is INFORMED, as FREE MARKET PRINCIPLES DEMAND, and everyone wins.

Oh really? When the last time

Re:Operation as normal

[BeanThere]

Welcome to capitalism. If one can get away with it, one can make as much money as they want

Really!? Are you SURE that you cannot have intellectual property rights in a capitalist system? (Or is just cool to blindly diss capitalism as evil without understanding it? Do you further think these abuses would not be possible under socialism or communism? Have you really thought this through?)

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

"FOX news type people" is just a label I like, since they aren't true conservatives. Let's not go off on that tangent either, it doesn't matter. It is just a personal preference. No need to get bogged down by things like this.

Maybe you should find a different label that others can enjoy too. There isn't any real reason to use Fox News when your clearly talking about more then that. My entire post responding to your first post was because I couldn't see why you were limiting this to only people who watch Fox News.

For the "Granny's Cookies" scenario, big deal if she has to look at her supplier's nutritional information and do some math. People deserve to know what they are eating. This is not the stone age. She also has health standards to follow because of government regulation. Lets get rid of that too while we are at it, eh? It is not expensive to get a second hand computer and printer, and if she can't handle the basic math required to add the nutritional data of her ingredients, she has bigger problems to deal with. Businesses have costs, nutritional data is not frivolous by any means.

They still need special packaging and the ability to print on it. You cannot simply put the un-edible ink that comes with a printer inside a package on a printout or something. Everything that touches the food needs to be edible, ink included Good luck finding edible ink for just any printer. Of course you can tape or past something outside the package and make it look cheap as hell.

I was only talking about cases where nutrition information is required by regulation. Obviously there are cases where more regulation is required. So what exactly did I miss again?

And I was talking about where the regulation get screwed up by the government and either doesn't completely do the job or makes it worse. My point was made.

This is just a veiled way of saying "government regulation is always bad". If market == flawed, and market > government regulation, then we can clearly infer that what you mean to say is that government regulation should never be used, because the market does a better job. If this is not what you mean, please clarify. Saying that the market works better than the government for the 82nd time is not clarification, it is repetition.

Your attempting to put too much of your own opinion into interpreting what I am saying. You end up making it sound like something you want to hear more then what I said. Let me lay this out for you, Government interference is worse then letting the market work it out. When the market cannot work it out, the government needs to do something. I am not supporting and never did claim that government regulation should never be used. The market should be allowed to work itself out because it would ultimately do a better job. Somethings just aren't fixable by the market though and in those cases, regulation would be necessary.

You seem to have this binary interpretation that it is either market or government to the rescue. You also don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of a free market where the market sorts things out.

What Enron did could only happen in the newly relaxed regulatory environment of California at the time. But we both know you already knew that.

Actually, Enron was doing this before deregulation came about. The deregulation just allowed them to compound what they were doing to a point it collapsed. And to Enron's credit, the deregulation of the California market where this stuff primarily happened was only a partial deregulation. There was no free market, just a less regulated market.

Would you believe that preventing the loss of many honest people's life savings before they are gone is better than arresting someone after the fact? That is the goal. Doesn't always work that good, but its better than not trying at all.

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

I find it quite enjoyable for tonge-in-cheek slashdot comments. I wasn't writing an essay.

Well you can see what your tongue and cheek can start when your the only one that gets it. To everyone else you were limiting your group of people to some artificial prerequisite that doesn't fit what you wanted to say.

Or just hire someone else to do it. Economies of scale and all that jazz, it would be cheaper and easier. Hooray for markets.

Yes, economics of scale and all that. raised the bar for entry and before long all businesses will be controlled by rich people and the American dream can be tossed out with yesterdays trash. It has been obvious that you aren't very observant all through these posts so it makes sense that you haven't thought much of this through. Maybe that is why you favor government regulation, could it be that you prefer the smart people to make these decisions instead of you and your impact on a market?

Your point is made. That more regulation is needed. Cool!

Lol.. And your right, that was exactly my point. If the market wanted the information to be present, it would be there already. But piss poor regulation by the government has neglected key areas and failed to do it properly and now it needs revisited. And this doesn't even start to address motives and all. Could it be that the restaurant industry was neglected so that store bought food would be more expensive and you as a consumer would eat out more? Think about this, you cannot go into the grocery market and buy the food to make the same meals for the price the restaurants charge. If your lucky, you will might break even but for the most of it, once you factor preparation and all, your over the costs. Is this regulation hurting or helping you? We already know it didn't fix the problem it was attempting to.

I still suspect this is along the lines of "we need need to do more research first" as a way of delaying something indefinitely, but who knows (other than you). I wonder why you continually tried proving to me that regulation can be bad, when I have been very clear that I believe in only limited and temporary regulation until the market has matured enough to handle it on its own, and that too much regulation is harmful.

The problem is, regulation is always worse then the market fixing itself. It is only when the market cannot fix something that the ramifications of interference will be acceptable. A last resort thing if your will.

Imagine we were being invaded by a country with far superior numbers of troops. We have better weapons and armor and better trained soldiers but the vast amounts of troops of the enemy are lopsided. SO the question might be, do we launch a nuke and attempt to fix the problem of their troop strength or do we wait to see how our soldier and superior tactics handle it. Obviously if we are being over run, launch the nuke, the market isn't fixing the problem. But if it is, then using the nuke will cause more issues that we will have to deal with later. Government regulation of a market to fix a percieved problem is a last resort measure that will have issues that we will need to deal with later. If we are going to regulate for the sake of regulating, why not just bar all but the rich from participating, define what the products can be in the first place and regulate how much profit on each product can be made. It really goes along these lines because that is what is happening right now. Look at the trans fat bans and how different chicken and french fries taste because of it.

My response to that is what you said earlier: Your attempting to put too much of your own opinion into interpreting what I am saying. and would have to kindly recommend you reread what I wrote. I prefer letting the market sort things out when it can and have been quite clear about that. A truly free market is not desirable because the condi

Re:Operation as normal

[sumdumass]

It is pretty well known what I was talking about. What do you suggest I call fake conservative extremists, who just happen to almost universally watch FOX news only? Dittoheads? :)

How about "free marketers" or "Neocons". It would be more fitting seeing how you admit that you included more people then those that watch Fox News. And as far as it being well know, Well, maybe in the camp you subscribe to but the rest of us don't generally go around calling people nicknames that have nothing to do with them.

You can get some white paper bags, adjust the thickness of paper on the printer to accept the thicker bags, print out the necessary information, and put the actual food in a plastic bag inside the paper bag. It isn't that expensive or hard. Or you can hire someone else do it for you even cheaper. Do you really think we would be better off without food labels? It seems like you are suggesting that labels would exist on their own through market forces, so "big business" would push Granny out of the market on its own, right? Granny can't compete with "big business" and its free market food labels. Get a grip man.

like I said, raise the bar for entry. You can justify it all you want but it still does it. Regulate some more and it will be specific bags from specific printers and specific ink and it will only go higher. Wait until Burger kind or Subway has to have three menu boards to list their nutritional values. You would be hard pressed to find something to order let along how good or bad it is for you. But I know, you can rationalize it in your head so fuck everyone else, they have to pay to play right?

If you still think I prefer government regulation, you clearly have not been paying attention. I think the market works best most of the time, but am not afraid to admit that when the market can't handle the problem, the government should step in - if it can do it better. Sometimes it can, nothing wrong with that.

Well, it is hard to tell where you are because you have been all over the place. I started by corecting you in that it isn't that the market solves everything, it is that it solves it better then the government. You replied with how you thought the government done it better. Well actually you replied with an all or nothing scenario with a knife and I turned it into the whack gun control nuts and you thought I missed the all or nothing thing. Then you replied with it. But then you admitted that the market does some thing better yet you still argue that i am wrong. And now, Finally, your attempting to claim that you are in the same boat as me. Which means, you agree with all those fox news Types you were railing on in the first place. There might be disagreements in when the market has failed and when the government should step in, but we and the Fox News types are in agreement with the premise of the market should solve things first.

Maybe you didn't know what the Free market argument was about? I don't know.

Pure drivel. The market isn't perfect the first time around. Neither is the government. Or anything else in reality. Enough said.

Your right, the market isn't perfect the first time around. But it doesn't need an act of congress to fix itself. Imagine if you have to ask congress to approve whether or not you could buy a new car. Do you see the benefit of not having to wait on a largely separated government body to make decisions for you?

Economies of scale are bad now. Commie!

Lol.. It isn't economics of scale. It is artificial and excessive regulation. I would agree with you if there wasn't a point in my life time when the reverse was true. So what happened was, regulation made it more profitable for you to go out to eat then to stay at home. This was likely to spur the growth of restaurants in order to provide jobs for the people displace when manufac

It's copyright infringement

[tepples]

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.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[webmaster404]

Yes, thats wrong, but does it hurt you that much? Not hardly at all. Sure its not nice but the real question is, did you lose any money or users that would contribute and such. I highly doubt that. This probobly happens to almost all F/OSS software at one point in time, but the people who do that don't have the coding talent to keep up with releases. I am not saying that it is not bad, but for a title of "beware of backspaceware" is kind of overstating that.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[pipatron]

but the real question is, did you lose any money or users that would contribute and such

Fortunately, for most people, money is not everything, nor even that important. A big reason for working on free software is simply to get your name out there. To be recognized. This is exactly what the person robs you of, doing this.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[Penguinisto]

It certainly didn't hurt Microsoft when they ripped off FreeBSD's TCP/IP networking stack and called it their own, no?

'course, it didn't do the FOSS community any favors by that action...

/P

Re:It's copyright infringement

[rucs_hack]

It certainly didn't hurt Microsoft when they ripped off FreeBSD's TCP/IP networking stack and called it their own, no? /sigh

Here we go again.

Microsoft did not rip off the BSC TCP/IP stack. They, and every other OS vendor were *expected* (almost required I think) to use it, AND they left the copyright notices in, as required. The idea was that everyone would be on the same page, as it were. OK Microsoft buggered it a bit with their darn silly extensions, but even these did not stop network connections from other OS's from working properly.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[DECS]

Microsoft appears to have used the BSD networking code according to its license, as did many other operating systems. This is actually a good thing, because it ensured Windows would at least be interoperable with other IP clients, and likely have better networking compatibility than had Microsoft written up an implementation itself.

There are a variety of reasons to support open source, and not all are "to end all proprietary development." BSD/MIT/Apache licenses in particular are open to encourage interoperability and code reuse. Writing GPL software that nobody can really use commercially in a closed project provides alternatives to those who want only open software, but does nothing for the vast majority of users who just want things to work.

Microsoft should now drop its IE code and adopt Mozilla or KHTML, and support Open Document by basing the next version of Office on OpenOffice code. Tee Hee. Oh, my sides hurt. Perhaps Windows 7 could just be Linux with a Microsoft .Net middleware running Microsoft branded OpenOffice and Microsoft Firefox.

Should Apple TV Copy Tivo and Media Center?

With Apple holding onto 91% of the market for digital video downloads, one might think that the company's rapid ascendancy in movie sales would have received more attention by the media. Instead, reporters have suggested reasons why the figures don't really matter and analysts are offering their advice on how to "fix" Apple's digital strategy. Most of the suggestions involve Apple stooping to copy the failure of Microsoft's DRM-centric rental revocations or the Media Center/Tivo DVR money pit between the rock of cable providers and the hard place of consumers looking for cheap hardware.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[Kjella]

His copyright notices yes, but the "About" box is not a copyright notice. You can replace any about box with "Backspacesoftware Deluxe, (c) Backspacecorporation Inc. This software contains code licensed from third parties, click link below for details". All you need to do is to notify people is to obfuscate yet still technically inform people it's under the GPL and have a source file available and you're home free. Example would be to hide it behind a separate page "License details", and during installation not mention the intent of the license or the name, just that this is a licensing agreement you need to click through like other closed source software.

Technically there's nothing the GPL can or should do about this, for example because Debian had some trouble with the Firefox trademark requirements, they released iceweasel. Iceweasel is in pretty much every form of definition "backspaceware", even though there's nothing malevolent about it. Nor is "backspaceware" really distinguishable from a fork in its infancy. The good guys of course give credit and say "this is baed on..." but the bad guys don't. But trying to make that a formal requirement would probably lead of pages of everything all your software and libraries once upon a time was based on.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

but the real question is, did you lose any money or users that would contribute and such

Fortunately, for most people, money is not everything, nor even that important. A big reason for working on free software is simply to get your name out there. To be recognized. This is exactly what the person robs you of, doing this.

Ah, yes, the need for recognition. You have finally gotten to the heart of the discussion. No one else has seem to have gotten it except perhaps the OP webmaster404, who didn't communicate it well. Everyone else is off on "it's wrong because the law says so."

In the words of Maslow: "A musician must make music, the artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualisation.". This happens after the various esteem needs, love needs, safety needs, and physiological needs are met.

I have contributed a lot of code, writings, music, artwork, and even new math theorems to the public domain. I usually state explicitly (since no one seems to get it) that you can use my stuff for commercial or noncommercial purposes, with or without acknowledgment. You'll have to take that statement at face value since you don't know who I am, but my stuff is "around", from background music in people's home pages (where sometimes perhaps I'd prefer not to be recognized :) ) to discussion forums to Wikipedia (where they acknowledge it). Why should I be upset if you use my stuff helps you become successful? I am reasonably successful in life otherwise, and the things that I do are done because I want, even need, to do them, not because of what recognition I may or may not receive.

And to quote another nameless AC: "the average reasonably-successful-slashdotter-guy gets stuck with the 'esteem needs' stage aiming for Karma. Only us self-actualized 'Anonymous Coward' guys rise above this with insightful and informative posts such as this one without whoring for karma."

Re:It's copyright infringement

[tepples]

You can replace any about box with "Backspacesoftware Deluxe, (c) Backspacecorporation Inc. This software contains code licensed from third parties, click link below for details". A proper secondary dialog box listing additional credits would be responsible design, not backspacing. But did Backspacecorporation do this, or did it completely remove the copyright notice from the about box?

Re:It's copyright infringement

[cheater512]

Not directly harmful no but it is a insult to the author.

I know that if it happened to me then I'd be bloody pissed.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[Penguinisto]

They, for all intents and purposes, ripped it off. The required copyright notice you so fervently point at was buried deep in a .dll file, FFS.

/P

Re:It's copyright infringement

[rucs_hack]

Wow, way to have blinkered vision.

FYI they were under no obligation whatsoever to include the copyright notice. They did though. Also, so what if it was in a DLL? Is that important?

I do so tire of people claiming it was ripped off though. As I said, they were supposed to take it, that was the whole idea. It was why BSD was asked toi implement it in the first place, to avoid each vendor having their own implementation and buggering up TCP/IP. Microsoft didn't actually have to, and I believe they were using their own stack to begin with, but as soon as possible they switched.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[mabhatter654]

There's no such thing as "plagiarism" in the business world.. you got the product sold, job done... that's all that matters. Copyright only matters as far as the legal ramifications... if they think nobody will notice, then it's no big deal.. just encrypt THEIR code so nobody can see!

They system is broken, nobody follows the rules.. only the OSS people even care but nobody is listening.

Re:It's copyright infringement

[mabhatter654]

But the firefox copyrights are still there. Those aren't removed. In these cases people go thru ALL the file headers trying to remove the other person's name thinking nobody will notice. In the case of Iceweasel, Mozilla requested the trademarks of firefox (not copyright notifications) be removed in accordance with the license terms included with all the versions. Debian changed the name because the license required it. The copyrights are still 100% intact.

Obfuscated C

[Bios_Hakr]

This is a good reason to implement obfuscated C for things like the program name and author.

Re:Obfuscated C

[3p1ph4ny]

You don't have to know what code does to be able to delete it.

Re:Obfuscated C

[Lehk228]

if you want the rest of the project to compile you do!

Creative Commons

[thomas.galvin]

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...

Closing the source?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

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.

Re:Closing the source?

[GoofyBoy]

>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.

Then definitely he should be worried.

Re:Closing the source?

[nomadic]

which is a major overreaction to this joker.

This guy is definitely overreacting big time. He's trying to make it sound like it's a chronic problem. Why call it "backspaceware" when it's one guy? Just call it "whatever the guy calls his ripoff program."

Re:Closing the source?

[Threni]

> His "solution" to this seems to be to close the source for parts of the program, which is a major overreaction to this joker.

Exactly. It's a free program. Why should anyone care? Is this an ego thing?

Re:Closing the source?

[mysticgoat]

OTOH, his behavior is consistent with having first decided to close the source, and then coming up with this as an acceptable excuse to lay out before his user base.

Perhaps the people at his day job, at Microsoft, have offered to buy his copyright. There would be a need to close the source in a way that would not offend potential purchasers of any Microsoft product that would be marketed as a follow-on to the users of his original work.

Either the author of TFA is incredibly naive about the software community, or he is attempting to do something clever in the way of marketdroid spin. I doubt very much that he could have gained sufficient experience to write a major piece of software without losing his naivety along the way. OTOH, he works in an environment that values cleverness in exploiting markets and marks above honesty, ethics, or legalities.

Just saying.

Re:Closing the source?

[bcrowell]

Yeah. I think this is an interesting example of how underdeveloped and pathetic the OSS scene on Windows is. It's like going back in a time machine to 1988, when nobody had ever heard of the Gnu Project, nobody had ever heard of copyleft, and "free" software meant a mixture of illegally copied closed-source software and legally downloaded closed-source nagware, tipware, and crippleware. I sympathize with the author of Paint.NET, but he's fighting against a culture where most people have no idea what OSS is, and where all the social mechanisms the Linux/BSD community has developed don't exist. It's as though some British banker showed up in the Trobriand Islands in 1880 and announced that he was going to build a stock exchange. This whole thing would be a nonissue if this was Linux rather than Windows. Paint.NET is apparently a very popular piece of software with an active user community, so if it was Linux software, it would certainly have been packaged for Debian by now. People would be getting the latest version by doing an "apt-get install paint-dot-net." Imagine if someone made a backspaceware version of The Gimp -- obviously it just wouldn't work.

I used to be interested in the idea of spreading the word about OSS by making cross-platform apps available on both Windows and Linux -- the kind of thing that theopencd.org used to do. I had a a GUI app I'd written for my own use on Linux, and while I was at it, I made sure it ran on Windows. On the one hand, it was surprisingly successful. Judging by the emails I was getting, the vast majority of my users were on Windows. On the other hand, it was a huge amount of work to support those Windows users, and I started to question whether I was really accomplishing anything useful. When you write OSS that runs on Linux, you get that warm fuzzy feeling of belonging to a community and building something big and exciting. When you write OSS that runs on Windows, the users are not a community that has the same philosophical goals and is working toward the same ends; the users are people who typically couldn't care less about OSS (that's why they run Windows) but who simply want something for free. I ended up putting a notice on the web site saying that I would no longer provide support for Windows users; the source is still open, and they're welcome to try running it, but if it doesn't work, I don't have any motivation anymore to put in time helping a community that doesn't care about the things I care about. I don't think I'm alone in having this kind of experience. For instance, theopencd.org's site now says they're no longer actively developing the CD, and just has links to ubuntu, etc.

What's sad about the Paint.NET story is that the author seems genuinely pained and bewildered by the situation he's in, and since he doesn't seem to care about free information per se, it's like he doesn't have a compass to guide him. He runs up against this issue, and his reaction is, "oh well, I'll take the software closed-source." That's what the whole Windows OSS scene is like -- a bunch of people wandering around without any common vision of what they're trying to accompish. It's like watching the Israelites wandering around in the desert without Moses.

Re:Closing the source?

[nametaken]

Seriously... people are going to rip stuff off no matter what you do. If you want to write software that anyone can look over, learn from and use... who cares if some mope out there is trying to run a scam? Best you can ever do is try to make everyone aware of the scam artists.

It's not like someone doing this is going to make a much better version, close the source, and make a hyper-mega-global-corp out of scamming Paint.Net source without attribution. They just want the quick buck.

Re:Closing the source?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I don't know why this post was marked 'flamebait'. To me it seemed spot on.

Rich.

Re:Closing the source?

[blowdart]

he's fighting against a culture where most people have no idea what OSS is, and where all the social mechanisms the Linux/BSD community has developed don't exist

Why yes, because linux and bsd code have never been ripped off. That's never happened. No. Not at all. What utter nonsense. Nor does the author talk about taking the software closed source; if you read the article he talks about distributing part of the project as a binary, the bits that people can easily use to just change the copyright messages, the installer and other small bits. The removal of the current source is a stopgap until he decides which option to take.

But hey, lets not let facts get in the way of a good Microsoft bash. Where you went wrong is you said Windows instead of Windoze, and forgot to use Micro$oft. Then you may have been marked insightful.

Re:Closing the source?

[try_anything]

His "solution" to this seems to be to close the source for parts of the program, which is a major overreaction to this joker.

It's possible to rebrand a program without having the source. Six years ago I used a commercial modeling front-end to prepare a demo of a research project my company was doing. I hacked our back-end code, which was a middleware product that as yet had no GUI (and no apparent need for one) to emit data that the front end used to display pretty pictures showing our product in action.

Then someone realized that the pretty pictures actually had some business value in their own right. My boss immediately replaced all the branding in the commercial modeling tool with our logo and redid the About... page to make it look like we developed it. He did this by hacking the binary installed version of the product and generating a new installer for it. No source code required.

His excuse was, "If the demo gets us a deal, we'll call the front-end company and negotiate with them to rebrand the product." Right. That makes it okay, then.

Re:Closing the source?

[bcrowell]

Why yes, because linux and bsd code have never been ripped off.
I didn't say that linux and bsd code had never been ripped off.

Nor does the author talk about taking the software closed source; if you read the article he talks about distributing part of the project as a binary, the bits that people can easily use to just change the copyright messages, the installer and other small bits. The removal of the current source is a stopgap until he decides which option to take.
Here I agree that you have more of a point. However, if you cripple the source code distribution so that it's no longer possible to compile the whole thing from source, to me that indicates that the software is no longer open source. Pick any high-profile OSS project such as the Gimp or gcc, and ask yourself what would happen if the leaders annouced that they were taking just a little of the code closed source. Nobody would say, "Oh, that's all right, gcc is still 90% open source." They would say, "That's ridiculous -- I'm switching to llvm," or maybe "That's ridiculous, I'm forking the fully open-source version."

Re:Closing the source?

[belmolis]

If your boss can hack a binary then, although one may question his ethics, at least he isn't a PHB.

Re:Closing the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single time I see this kind of bullshit it's Windows software.

I think Windows, on top of the occasional technical or other necessity of using it, attracts the sort of people I saw in a Pound Shop today.

In the Pound Shop everything costs £1 exactly. The people I saw were buying branded orange squash in 1 litre bottles. Here's the problem, in any supermarket, or large grocery store those bottles cost less. In you're buying several bottles (as some customers were) you can get 3 for £1.80 in a store just five minutes walk from the Pound Shop. That's a 40% saving.

The Pound Shop's brand positioning is that it's a discount store, everything is cheap, volumes are high, staff knowledge is zero, aisles are narrow, it's intended to give the impression that overheads have been cut to the bone in order to reduce prices. The reality is that only a few products are ever discounted to the point where other stores can't match them. Everything else is actually selected on very simple criteria - it should not have a visible price indication and it should have a retail value of close to but less than £1.

That's what this backspaceware is all about. It's the hunt for people who are so stupid, that if you say "Here's a dollar bill, I usually sell these for $5, but today I'll do a special offer, three for $10" they'd actually buy it.

Re:Closing the source?

[sumdumass]

Well, why I just don't like the term Backspaceware, I can see the point of labeling it something. It is a piece of code or a program that someone merely changed the credits for. I mean it isn't as if the code in itself were changed and someone else wanted credit too, it is that they just deleted the credit and placed their names in there for whatever reason.

I think that should be distinguished from someone who actually improves the code and wanting credit. I don't think it really matters what license it is under, or if it is allowed, there is a certain amount of respect for the type of person doing it that should not be displayed. I think that should be differentiated from someone who actually touched the code in some meaningful even if insignificant ways other then removing copyright credits.

Re:Closing the source?

[try_anything]

Rebranding the program was easier than I expected, although I have to admit I had no idea how easy until he explained it. He just downloaded a few point-and-click tools off the internet: one to replace images in the Windows resource file, one to locate and edit hard-coded strings in the binary, and one to create the installer. (I suppose replacing null-terminated strings is pretty easy if you replace each string with a shorter string. It might be harder to hack a .NET program -- you'd probably need to disassemble the compiled classes, edit them, and recompile them.)

Re:Closing the source?

[belmolis]

Okay, so he's not a guru, but still, that's better than a lot of manager types. Replacing null-terminated strings is indeed easy so long as the replacement is no longer. I've done that in Unix binaries. (Not for nefarious purposes. In one case, I paid the small fee for a useful piece of shareware, then lost the registered version. The only difference was that the unregistered version would tell you with irritating frequency that it was unregistered, so I just edited the string "Unregistered" to read "Registered".)

Re:Closing the source?

[cnettel]

Now, I am a complete idiot here, but isn't there some quite high-profile open-source projects where the normal source distribution doesn't include artwork or other material that's needed to build a properly branded version?

Re:Closing the source?

[a_nonamiss]

As a Windows IT professional, I am offended by your comment. I love the open-source community. I support it as much as I can as often as I can. I'm becoming more and more proficient at Linux, too, but there's an element of snobbery in the Linux community that drives intelligent people away. It's unfortunate, too, because I think that those elitists are in the minority.

Re:Closing the source?

[shark72]

"Exactly. It's a free program. Why should anyone care? Is this an ego thing?"

We often justify music piracy by stating that if the musician is a real artist, just getting his work out there should be enough, and he shouldn't worry too much about making money per sale. We also state that we may, in the future, "go to a concert or buy a t-shirt," thus promoting the notion that by pirating the musican's work, we are helping them.

It now appears that further marginalization is happening: people who produce creative works should not be concerned if their work is re-released under somebody else's name.

Re:Closing the source?

[Riktov]

It's like watching the Israelites wandering around in the desert without Moses.

You mean that angry guy with a flowing smelly beard who hasn't bathed in forty days and forty nights?

Re:Closing the source?

[mabhatter654]

As a IS worker in a Windows shop, I see exactly what they're talking about. Windows users want stuff "free" and to "just work". There's all sorts of "free" windows software, IE, Acrobat Reader, Flash player, Divx.. etc... all that stuff works and requires no input. I mention free software to the in-laws that pirate stuff and it's "not as good as.." expensive Windows program.. they pirate from the web. They're not interested in nursing it along, or building up a community.

Windows people also don't look up help.. at all. Even my co-workers struggle to do proper googling on subjects, let alone normal users. They don't know how or where to look for help and have no practice at it.

Re:Closing the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think about mozilla/Firefox: they _do_ include the artwork for a branded version. They just don't allow you to distribute it if you build it with the branded artwork. And I think they also have special non-branded artwork included that is just as usable.
So I really don't think that is comparable...

Re:Closing the source?

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, there are two qualifications to make.

First of all, is it just Windows users who want stuff for free?

Secondly, are all Windows users like that?

I think you will find that the answer to both questions is "no". There are people on other operating systems who want stuff for free and don't care a whit about ideology, and there are Windows users who care about ideology and actively participate in open source projects, and don't violate others' copyrights.

Re:Closing the source?

[a_nonamiss]

I think it's an unfortunate sentiment among some Linux users that all Windows users are greedy idiots. Yes, there are many greedy idiots out there, nobody will deny that. I'll even admit that a majority of them are Windows users. But that's where Microsoft has figured out something that many in the Linux community still haven't. They cater to those people. Why do you think they put such annoying and ridiculous copy protection on their software? Because they know their target audience well.

I'm not a Microsoft lover by a longshot, but if Linux, and OSS in general, ever want to make inroads against Microsoft, they need to learn to at least be tolerant, if not embrace, those people. Yes, there still needs to be a committed, community based group of people to make up the backbone of the Open-Source community, but essentially the GP post said "I don't want to make software that appeals to the general public because they don't appreciate it." Well, apparently Microsoft has figured out that if you make software easy enough and polished enough for the general public to use, they'll appreciate it at least enough to fork over $500 for it.

Yes, being a member of the OSS community is thankless. Over the last two weeks, I was trying to configure an OSS package for a specific task. I posted several humble, intelligent, reasonable, well-researched questions on the forums and IRC channel, and got exactly ZERO responses from anyone. After about 40 hours of researching it on my own (which would have taken about 2 hours if any of my questions had been answered) I finally figured out what I needed to do. Then, I spent an hour and a half (of Saturday time, which is worth twice as much as weekday time) posting a comprehensive how-to on a forum, so that the next person wouldn't have to needlessly go through the trouble I did. I didn't get a single thanks, or even a response. I just got the satisfaction of knowing that the next person with that particular issue wouldn't have to go through as much as I did.

Shady business practices

[drspliff]

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.

Re:Shady business practices

[FooAtWFU]

To their credit, I'm fairly sure they actually bought the rights off the original author legitimately, and did not steal DOS.

Re:Shady business practices

[VGPowerlord]

I'm pretty sure that they actually wrote the BASIC interpreter for the Altair. Heck, Paul Allen apparently wrote the bootloader on the plane trip out to Altair's HQ because Bill Gates forgot to write one.

Oh, wait, were you referring to DOS? See the reply above mine.

Re:Shady business practices

[Anonymous Coward]

They wrote Altair BASIC using computer time they didn't pay for and cribbed from public domain sources to do it. As for QDOS, it was a CP/M clone and although there are rumors of an out of court settlement with DRI many years later, there's no evidence Microsoft paid Kildall anything at the time.

Everyone here (esp you) already knows this - so stop trolling!

Re:Shady business practices

[mabhatter654]

I'd say Billy G started it pulling code print from trash cans. The whole "ethos" of the closed source world is that if you can "see" it, take it.. worry about legality if you get caught later. All the big Windows software companies started with flagrant disregard for IP... especially the "shared credit" kind. Most of the big companies "fixed" that by cross licensing everything and allowing developers to "just rip" whatever they want. Much of Visual Studio can be ripped, "backspaced" whatever you want.. as long as you keep in on WINDOWS... People are used to being serfs on the farm, not free men.

Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[tepples]

to the solution to your problems. Years ago, I dealt with somebody who backspaced my freepuzzlearena package, which was distributed under GNU GPL version 2 or later. Specifically, he did not "includ[e] an appropriate copyright notice" on the title screen. We cleared it up amicably: he agreed to stop distributing the backspaced version. But not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly as this one was.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[kryten_nl]

You can sign over your copyright to the EFF (correct me if I'm wrong) and they will defend your code vigorously.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[j-pimp]

You can sign over your copyright to the EFF (correct me if I'm wrong) and they will defend your code vigorously.

I know the FSF provides this service. I did not know the EFF did.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[rucs_hack]

Its just the FSF as far as I'm aware. I looked into it myself, but opted for them listing my project but not holding copyright.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[Cal Paterson]

GP is probably mistaking his initialisms.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[garbletext]

I like how you backed your premise with anecdotal evidence to the contrary there.

Re:Not all GPL violations get handled as smoothly

[ta bu shi da yu]

Well, if you want anecdotal evidence, try visiting GPL violations.

Statutory damages

[tepples]

Yes, thats wrong, but does it hurt you that much? Under United States law, whether it hurts the author does not matter, except in the narrow reckoning of fair use (17 USC 107). Some free software maintainers are smart enough to register major releases of the software with the United States Copyright Office. If such a release gets backspaced, a jury may award the author $750 to $30,000 in statutory damages (17 USC 504(c)) despite that the author cannot prove economic harm.

Re:Statutory damages

[webmaster404]

Still though, in reality it does absolutly nothing, sure it may be illegal, my point isn't to say that it is not illegal and that it is not bad, but to say that it shows absolutly no harm, and for 99.99% of F/OSS projects it will not affect them in the least.

Re:Statutory damages

[squiggleslash]

You don't view it as doing harm. The authors who want recognition for their work do. And copyright law is on their side.

Re:Statutory damages

[kryptkpr]

I've had this happen to projects I lead. Adware/spyware is almost always bundled (it's distribution is the primary motivation for Backspaceware), and this definitely causes harm. Fortunately, sites like download.com have a review process and they found my email address buried in the 'about' dialog, I guess the backspacers missed one...

Re:Statutory damages

[zakkie]

Sometimes there is a direct loss when work is plagiarised. Also, Google has odd algorithms for determining how high one should place in their rankings. I release all my data under the GPL and often legitimate copies and absolute ripoffs both rank higher than I do for most search terms I would expect people to find my site with. Monetary loss aside, the fact that someone is trying to pass off another's hard work as their own is simply despicable.

Re:Statutory damages

[BorgCopyeditor]

You're the nitwit. The GP mentions the law, but the focus of the comment was on harm, which the GGP keeps insisting is what is relevant instead of the law.

Re:Statutory damages

[Xaositecte]

Here's the thing:

1. Various people in this thread cannot see the harm in distributing software without giving credit for it.

2. The Author of the software sees this practice as harmful, whether as a material loss, a potential to lose copyright by not defending it, The principle of the thing or any number of other reasons. The only thing that matters is the author believes he has been harmed by this copyright infringement.

3. These are contradictory viewpoints, and amount to little more than opinion when placed in a vacuum. The rational, logical discussion you think you're looking for is impossible. We are forced to look at how disputes like this have been settled in the past, an appeal to the majority in the form of looking at established laws.

Therefore, the law IS relevant, and is pretty clear cut in this circumstance. Society judges harm has occured.

If you want to make an arguement without considering established law, all you're doing is intellectual masturbation. If you want to make an arguement about how the law should be changed, by all means, make it.

Re:Statutory damages

[BorgCopyeditor]

You're replying to the wrong person.

Re:Statutory damages

[ShieldW0lf]

Lying is the greatest harm in the world. It causes people to act irrationally.

In this case, you're giving people reason to believe that you the plagiarist have competency when you don't, and you're removing the evidence of the authors competence and skill. On top of that, you're making the whole world a place full of lies and deceit, where we need to recheck everything over and over in case some malignant asshole is polluting the truth.

Liars should be put to death.

Re:Statutory damages

[heinousjay]

Assuming you never tell lies (since you obviously don't want yourself put to death) I wonder how you'll feel being all alone in the world?

Re:Statutory damages

[joe 155]

"If you want to make an arguement without considering established law, all you're doing is intellectual masturbation. If you want to make an arguement about how the law should be changed, by all means, make it."

Well, I would have to say that I disagree here. If we can discuss what justice requires in a situation without using current law then we end up having a very strong argument for change (assuming that what is and what should be differ). Normative arguments don't have to lack force so long as they are sufficiently consistent.

Re:Statutory damages

[Monx]

The GP is not alone. I haven't lied in many years. I know several other people who don't lie. You only have to be hurt by a lie once to realize that lies are evil.

Re:Statutory damages

[ehrichweiss]

There is no "potential to lose copyright by not defending it" at least in the U.S. You are thinking of "trademark".

Re:Statutory damages

[ShieldW0lf]

Assuming you never tell lies (since you obviously don't want yourself put to death) I wonder how you'll feel being all alone in the world?

At least I'd have relief from this zoo. The more people around, the farther away I need to roam to get the fuck away from them.

Re:Statutory damages

[heinousjay]

So maybe the bit about killing people in your sig doesn't count as a lie because you don't mean it? Or maybe you actually kill people and somehow feel justified in doing so for purely selfish reasons as you've indicated?

Re:Statutory damages

[zotz]

"You don't view it as doing harm. The authors who want recognition for their work do. And copyright law is on their side."

Perhaps a simple way to figure harm is this:

Number of downloaded / distributed copies X cost to send proper attribution documents to all people receiving copies with missing attribution. (plus research costs to determine who they are?)

all the best,

drew

Re:Statutory damages

[couchslug]

"the fact that someone is trying to pass off another's hard work as their own is simply despicable."

That is why they should be identified so the netizens can make appropriate choices about who to deal with.

Re:Statutory damages

[fyngyrz]

These people are already breaking the law. They know it. Discussing the law probably makes them laugh. Discussing their social status, loss of respect, and the harm they do to their peers is a lot more likely to have some kind of impact (though you'll note I didn't claim enough impact to stop them.) It doesn't help that a very large portion of current law is nonsensical, obsolete, blatantly unconstitutional, and often designed to disadvantage the citizen for the benefit of the large corporation or PAC. It also doesn't help that the GPL is an attempt to use the law to manage the problem.

Re:Statutory damages

[Lehk228]

howver there is absolutely no way for anyone else to believe you, as a liar would say exactly the same thing.

Re:Statutory damages

[Xaositecte]

Eh, I'm not a lawyer.

My Bad.

Re:Statutory damages

[Raenex]

Why not just kill yourself now then? Or better yet, get a sack of rice and move to the Alaskan wilderness.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's usually called copyright infringement, if this guy is too stupid to assert his authorship rights... that's his problem.

What an asshole!

Re:WTF?

[dosius]

Nah, it's worse (imho) than copyright infringement.

Most of us who casually infringe copyright don't delete the existing copyright notices and claim the stuff to be our own. These people do, making it plagiarism, which to me is copyright infringement compounded by *fraud*. I could care less about copyright infringement myself, but woe betide anyone who takes my work and calls it theirs!

-uso.

Re:So, whats the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Perception of copyright

[michaelmalak]

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.

Re:Perception of copyright

[doshell]

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.

It is orders of magnitude easier to reverse-engineer source code in a high-level language than it is to reverse-engineer machine code or even assembly code (especially when you have software at your disposal that can obfuscate the compiled machine code). That's why leaaking out source code is much more dangerous from the point of view of the proprietary software company.

Source code defined

[tepples]

This is a good reason to implement obfuscated C for things like the program name and author. But obfuscated code is arguably not "source code" as many common copyleft licenses define it. For example, the source code for a work under the GNU General Public License is "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". GNU manuals are distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which addresses obfuscation more directly: A "Transparent" copy of a document "is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic" software, and "A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent."

Re:Source code defined

[QuantumFTL]

"A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent."

If that's the case, why hasn't the EFF sued Larry Wall and his followers long ago?

Re:Source code defined

[firewood]

But obfuscated code is arguably not "source code" as many common copyleft licenses define it.

Remember that the GPL only applies to distributors of the software, not to the copyright holder, who needs no license to distribute any original works.

Re:Source code defined

[sumdumass]

Well, besides the point that the source code is specifically so you can see how and why and make changes to it, following a spec as in a programing language would be a preferred form of the work for making modifications to.

I guess the question is, would obfuscated code be the preferred form for making modifications to. I would say no because it doesn't follow the standards you originally set out with before obfuscating it. However, if you can sit down and code from scratch in an obfuscated form, then it would be preferred. However, if you have to run some randomizer or obfuscater on it before it is obfuscated, then no, it isn't the preferred form for making modifications to. And that would primarily be because it isn't the form you made modifications in.

Re:Source code defined

[Tim C]

I guess the question is, would obfuscated code be the preferred form for making modifications to.

And the answer is no. Obfuscation is used expressly for the purposes of making the code harder to understand, and thus harder to copy or modify. It just so happens that most obfuscation techniques also compact the source code, but assuming you're dealing with a compiled language (even if just to byte code, rather than native executable) then that's not a concern, and making it harder to understand if someone decompiles it would be the most likely reason for obfuscating it.

Re:Source code defined

[mabhatter654]

because they WRITE the perl code that way... it doesn't get any better.. the GPL's not designed to fix THAT problem.

Now why didn't I think of that?

[anss123]

Anyone know?

This comment sponsored by the RIAA

[carou]

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?

Backspaced comments

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Re:Backspaced comments

[stormguard2099]

I think you should feel pride that you have created comments insightful enough to be copied. Surely, the reason you posted them was to spread insightful knowledge and not merely to appear intelligent so your goal is still being accomplished right?

CentOS = backspaceware?

[MeanMF]

Better not give that prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor any ideas. They might try to put CentOS out of business.

Re:CentOS = backspaceware?

[caseih]

Glad to see the moderators correctly marking your post as funny. On a serious note, though, this "prominent North American Enterprice Linux vendor" doesn't own the copyright on most of the software they distribute to begin with. Both they and CentOS properly attribute the copyright owners. And despite the removal of trademarks (done at this "prominent North American Enterprice Linux" vendor's request), they do still attribute copyright to RedHat on programs and scripts that RH created.

don't let the door hit you on the way out

[m2943]

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.

What's the problem?

[Waffle Iron]

He's entitled to statutory damages of something like $150,000 per copy. He hit the jackpot.

this happened to me

[drtsystems]

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)

Re:this happened to me

[thona]

Actually he is not. He is fully in his rights to sell it, but he is not in the rights to take the authors name out and sell it as his own work.

Re:this happened to me

[psychiccyberfreak]

4. Conveying Verbatim Copies. You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee. So in other words you can modify it and sell it, but if it's copywriten under your name and he removed that, then it's breaking the GPL and you can sue him.

Re:this happened to me

[drtsystems]

well he completely got rid of any GPL notices. The fact that it was a PHP script meant that the source was there but he was trying to sell "licenses." I would have no problem with someone adding features to my script and releasing it as a derivative work. I'm obviously not trying to make money off of this seeing as I released it for free in the first place. Its the fact that he pretended it was his, gave me no credit, and tried to make money off of it without doing anything besides backspacing a few lines in the code.

Re:this happened to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I eventually got him to take it down by sending a cease and desist notice. (Thanks for the template RIAA)

"This is RIAA. It has come to our notion that you used our copyrighted cease and desist notice text without our permission..."

Re:this happened to me

[stg]

If he kept the copyright notices in the source code, but not on any user-visible interface, wouldn't that be enough to satisfy the GPL?

Re:this happened to me

[psychiccyberfreak]

I believe so, but remember the notices apply to anything, visible or non-visible to the end user. If you have the license shown on like an 'about' section of the program with a copyright/license notice, that must be kept intact.

Re:this happened to me

[uhlume]

copy-write != copyright :)

Re:this happened to me

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Add an obscure security hole to your software which only works if it detects it is "his" version. When he releases a new version with this in it, anonymously announce it to various security mailing lists. He won't have the skill to fix it on his own very quickly. Repeat a few times if necessary.

Of course, there will be a lot of collateral damage to his users who probably just didn't know any better...

Re:this happened to me

[simplerThanPossible]

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.

Outrageous, and good on you for stopping it. It's interesting how advertising and charging helped more people than the free approach.

Re:this happened to me

[treat]

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.

I see the insult, but not the injury. He obeyed your license!

Selling someone else's GPL'd software is standard practice and a multi-billion dollar industry.

I assume he kept your copyright notice of course.

One of the culprits

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:One of the culprits

[Mascot]

He might just not feel it's a problem. At the bottom of the page you find this:

Most of my products use Open Source Solutions from other developers Other gems on the site include

copyright © 2006-2013

I have been learning how to design software since 1993 Oh yeah, and his screenshots of so called "cool, skinnable" software show applications skinned by WindowBlinds. They do offer a product that allows you to develop and deliver WB skinned applications to people without WB installed. Full license for that costs $9,000. I think we can rule out him owning that license. :P

Re:So, whats the big deal?

[Neoprofin]

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.

Backspaced comments

[Xocet_00]

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.

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

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? You're trolling, of course, but here's an answer anyway. The objection is not that the software is being shared -- Paint.NET is freeware anyway, it's supposed to be shared -- but that someone else is taking credit for the real author's work.

That's fraud: the "backspacer" is lying to every person who downloads the modified software from him (and probably infecting them with spyware too). Many Slashdot participants, like myself, believe that copying and redistribution should be legal with or without the author's permission, but that doesn't mean we approve of fraud. Sharing copies of Star Wars is not the same as telling everyone you're George Lucas.

The solutions easy

[rucs_hack]

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.

Re:If he doesn't like it

[bluemonq]

Uh, no. All code that isn't yours must attributed to the original author.

Re:And why do I care?

[Ornedan]

And do you tell those friends of yours that you made that music and those movies?

Re:And why do I care?

[mi]

Many Slashdot participants, like myself, believe that copying and redistribution should be legal with or without the author's permission (emphasis mine -mi)

Thanks, I'll bookmark your post to illustrate my argument in future debates.

but that doesn't mean we approve of fraud. Sharing copies of Star Wars is not the same as telling everyone you're George Lucas.

Broken analogy. The injured software author in the article is not being impersonated. If you want to stick with movies, the situation being discussed is more like Michael Moore renaming "Star Wars" into "Stripe Wars" and replacing Emperor with Bush.

Free Open Source Software

[tristian_was_here]

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.

How's the saying go?

[TrebleJunkie]

A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged?

Moral rights

[frenchbedroom]

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 ?

Re:Moral rights

[david_thornley]

IANAL, but I don't think there's anything like "moral rights" in US law. That's left up to terms of work (in the case of work for hire) and licenses. All software licenses that I'm aware of have something like the "moral rights" in them. In many, you can do anything you like with it with the sole exception of claiming authorship.

If I put my work in the public domain, anybody can claim it as their own. If I put any software license I've ever seen on a work, then people can't claim it as their own. Distributing without a license is violation of copyright law.

So, in practice, I don't see that there would be any difference, except in cases of work for hire.

Re:Moral rights

[belmolis]

In general "moral rights" do not exist in the US because they conflict with the tradition of exclusive rights in Anglo-American law. (If one person owns a painting and therefore the copyright in the painting, while the moral rights remain with the artist, the rights to the painting are split between two owners.) The Visual Artists Rights Act confers some moral rights, but only on visual art.

Not about "source code", it's a legal issue...

[argent]

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.

Sugar Public License

[lullabud]

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.

Re:Sugar Public License

[JohnFluxx]

Sugar is back within the good graces, as you put it, because they are switching to GPLv3.

Re:Sugar Public License

[lullabud]

Exactly. Sugar no longer needs their own license because with v3 the GPL has caught up to the current needs of serious for-profit OSS companies. What I was intending to say is that Sugar was given shit for being ahead of the curve. GPL v3 incorporates exactly what Sugar had to do on their own with the SPL was doing 2 years ago.

I'm not saying GPL3 is bad in any way, I'm glad it's finally caught up to the needs of OSS businesses.

Re:Let me introduce you to a lie

[theshowmecanuck]

If you don't have the 'nads to go to court, you don't get protection.

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.

Re:So, whats the big deal?

[sgtrock]

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. :)

I loved this exchange in the comments:

[sgtrock]

Someone named Mario wrote:

Once the genie is out of the bottle it's hard to put it back in. It took 5 minutes to hunt down an alternate source for the 3.10 source code release you decided to pull. If you opt to engage in crippleware source code releases, you will ultimately find yourself competing against your own work as others will take over where you left off.

Playing catch up to one's own efforts can become a daunting task when faced with a team of capable and motivated developers. It's far less damaging to let the slouches have their brief stay in the spotlight.

To which Rick Brewster replied:

Mario - Then I guess I'll have to keep on innovating while not releasing the source code for the stuff that I want to keep real ownership of.

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. :)

ctrl + h

[thatskinnyguy]

I somehow always knew ctrl + h would be the death of us.

Backspaceware?

[Thaelon]

I have a better term for this, "plagiarism".

who cares?

[uepuejq]

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.

Trolls needs to eat too

[Per Abrahamsen]

> 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.

A little bit offtopic

[Mahenda]

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 :)

it happens with whole sites as well

[wikinerd]

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).

Re:it happens with whole sites as well

[cnettel]

500 contiguous lines or 500 lines in total? I would doubt your guesstimate for the former, while the latter seems far more believable. After all, it would be enough to have 50 ten-line snippets found in forums describing solutions to specific issues to get that number.

Document Registrar

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Document Registrar

[geekoid]

That's what a copyright is. Exactly what it is.

Get a copyright, the owner of said copyright can give almost any type of permission he wants. The only exception to permission he can grant or take away are fair use.

Fuck people.

Re:And why do I care?

[Tim C]

Sharing copies of Star Wars is not the same as telling everyone you're George Lucas.

No, it's not - sharing copies of Star Wars potentially denies the creators the chance to earn money from their work. Claiming to be someone as famous as George Lucas generally just makes you look like an idiot...

backspaceware is a lame name, try this:

[geekoid]

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 College Term Papers Solution

[Nom du Keyboard]

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!

Obligatory...

[WithLove]

1. Download source code 2. Change author/program name 3. ?????????? 4. Profit!

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

Thanks, I'll bookmark your post to illustrate my argument in future debates. Go right ahead. I'm passionate about this issue, reasonably articulate, and I believe in the freedom to copy as a principled free speech issue, not just a means to an end. Citing me is surely better than citing some kid who hasn't thought about copyright any further than its impact on his own wallet.

The injured software author in the article is not being impersonated. If you want to stick with movies, the situation being discussed is more like Michael Moore renaming "Star Wars" into "Stripe Wars" and replacing Emperor with Bush. Well, as the other commenter pointed out, I was going for George-Lucas-the-Star-Wars-creator, not George-Lucas-the-man. But clearly you got the point, and your silence on the middle section of my post (the actual answer to your question) suggests that you now understand the difference between fraud and copying, so I'll consider it a success.

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

sharing copies of Star Wars potentially denies the creators the chance to earn money from their work. Good choice of words: "chance" is exactly what it is. Instead of choosing to work in exchange for money proportional to the amount of work they put in, like most of us do, authors who rely on copyright are choosing to gamble on the chance that they'll be able to sell enough copies later to make up for the time they spent working - and potentially even get rich overnight if their work is a runaway hit.

But sometimes, when you gamble, you lose. Just like a blackjack player knows (or should know) that the odds are stacked against him, an author knows (or should know) that not everyone who enjoys his work will pay for it, and that because of the nature of information, no amount of legal or technical restrictions can change that fact. The way to win in the long run is not to gamble at all.

parent's sig is a shock site aggregation (n.t.)

[Non-Huffable Kitten]

no text

Linux Kernel

[Fantom42]

Isn't this was some BSD developers were claiming was being done to their code in the Linux kernel a while back?

We used to have this problem in the CP/M era

[davecb]

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

Re:And why do I care?

[mi]

Go right ahead. I'm passionate about this issue, reasonably articulate, and I believe in the freedom to copy as a principled free speech issue, not just a means to an end.

Well, then, you should not care for the guy in the article either — just as I said, as a typical Slashdot participant would not. Because where there is "freedom to copy", there is certainly "freedom to modify" — otherwise you'd be limiting the "principled free speech". The modifier should not, of course, pretend, that they are distributing (repeating) the original work (speech) — it would be fraud. But the fraudsters described in the article don't do that. They modify the name and the copyright of the original and claim it as their own. (The term is plagiarism.)

Well, as the other commenter pointed out, I was going for George-Lucas-the-Star-Wars-creator, not George-Lucas-the-man.

This correction does not make sense. George Lucas the man is George Lucas the Star Wars creator.

you now understand the difference between fraud and copying

Verbatim copying — if done contrary to the author's wishes — is itself bad (fraudulent or otherwise wrong) in my book. In your book there is nothing wrong with it. Your view, however, is internally self-contradictory, because you would still ban modifications of the originals — even if there is no attempt to pass them on as the original.

If anything, your stance is contrary to the principle of free speech — there is little to no value in verbatim repetitions of somebody else's speech, while modifying it may be valuable. Yet you are fine with the former but would ban the latter.

Maybe, you have not thought "long and hard" enough about this yet...

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

The modifier should not, of course, pretend, that they are distributing (repeating) the original work (speech) -- it would be fraud. But the fraudsters described in the article don't do that. They modify the name and the copyright of the original and claim it as their own. (The term is plagiarism.) Plagiarism is a form of fraud; that's what makes it bad.

The distinction you're trying to draw between taking credit for the original, unmodified work, and taking credit for a copy with minor changes, is a false one. 99% of the code in that modified version was still written by someone else, and if you say that you wrote the whole thing (by removing the original author's name and substituting your own), then you're lying to everyone who sees it.

In your book there is nothing wrong with [verbatim copying]. Your view, however, is internally self-contradictory, because you would still ban modifications of the originals -- even if there is no attempt to pass them on as the original. No, there's no contradiction. I don't think there's anything wrong with making modifications, as long as you're honest about it: credit the original authors for what they wrote, and only credit yourself for the changes you made yourself.

If anything, your stance is contrary to the principle of free speech -- there is little to no value in verbatim repetitions of somebody else's speech, while modifying it may be valuable. The relative value of verbatim repetition vs. modification is entirely dependent on context. For example, if I'm doing a physics calculation and I need to know the speed of light, I'd much rather have someone repeat that information to me verbatim than change it along the way. If I feel like watching E.T., I'd rather have someone repeat the original to me verbatim than give me a version where the guns are replaced with radios. If I'm drawing public attention to a clip I saw on the news, I'd better use a verbatim copy unless I want to be accused of adding my own bias by editing it.

Perhaps you're thinking of artistic value, but that's not the only thing that matters.

Re:And why do I care?

[Raenex]

No, there's no contradiction. I don't think there's anything wrong with making modifications, as long as you're honest about it: credit the original authors for what they wrote, and only credit yourself for the changes you made yourself. That's pretty clear in the beginning, but you quickly run into problems. What happens over time as the original bits are replaced with modified bits? How long is somebody entitled to have their name on a work, as it gets chopped up, modified, and recycled ad infinitum? When is somebody allowed to put their name on a work after making modifications? Do you have to credit every little snippet of code you reuse? What if you modify that snippet, are you going to attach your name to it?

Tracking credit can become very laborious. In the same way copyright can be denied as a principle of free speech, so can any requirements to assign credit.

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

That's pretty clear in the beginning, but you quickly run into problems. What happens over time as the original bits are replaced with modified bits? [...] Tracking credit can become very laborious. Then here's an easy solution: say where you got the code. Instead of just slapping your name on Paint.NET as if you'd written it yourself, mention that your program is based on Paint.NET, and let your users figure out who wrote Paint.NET if they care about that.

It really isn't hard to avoid committing fraud.

Re:And why do I care?

[Raenex]

You seem to be ignoring the part about code being "chopped up, modified, and recycled ad infinitum". Yes, it's quite simple when somebody just slaps their name on Paint.NET. It's not so simple as code is pulled in and modified from various sources, from little snippets, to big pieces of programs, and everything in between. As I said, it can get very laborious to accurately assign credit. At some point you'll just end up with an ever-growing list of names as it becomes impossible to disentagle who exactly wrote what.

Re:And why do I care?

[Mr2001]

Yes, it's quite simple when somebody just slaps their name on Paint.NET. And that's what this thread is about. "Backspaceware" refers to projects that are rebranded with little or no actual modification.

It's not so simple as code is pulled in and modified from various sources, from little snippets, to big pieces of programs, and everything in between. As I said, it can get very laborious to accurately assign credit. If you're just pulling in "little snippets", you probably don't need to worry about credit. If you're pulling in big pieces, then just make a note when you do it. I'm afraid I have no sympathy for someone who wants to grab random chunks of code but is too lazy to keep track of where they came from. In 12 years of programming, I've never encountered this supposed problem.

Linspire

[Goodgerster]

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...)