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Red Hat Developer Demands Competitor's Source Code
sfcrazy writes "A very serious argument erupted on the Linux kernel mailing list when Andy Grover, a Red Hat SCSI target engineer, requested that Nicholas A. Bellinger, the Linux SCSI target maintainer, provide proof of non-infringement of the GPL. Nick is developer at Rising Tide Systems, a Red Hat competitor, and a maker of advanced SCSI storage systems. Nick's company recently produced a groundbreaking technology involving advanced SCSI commands which will give Rising Tide Systems a lead in producing SCSI storage systems. Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat from getting access to that code as it's proprietary. What's uncertain is whether RTS' code is covered by GPL or not — if it is then Red Hat has all the rights to get access to it and it's a serious GPL violation."
thats what makes the difference...
if its just something he is developing at the moment AFAIK then he does not have to release it until he gives it to others...
Never touch any code under GPL.
Otherwise some asshole will demand to see your source to prove you didn't lift anything.
Never look at GPL code. If it's not out there under BSD you should develop it yourself.
If you are a professional coder, looking at GPL code can forever compromise you. After that they will demand you 'prove' purity.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat for getting access to that code as its proprietary.
What is this I don't even
That's what it seems like from the summary. If not can anyone explain why? I'm not about to read a kernel mailing list.
What the heck is wrong with COBOL? ;-)
Someone ought to tell the fucking idiot that the onus is on the ACCUSER to prove his case, not the other way round!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Proof of evil always has to be shown by the accuser. Not the other way around. Otherwise all companies could get the family jewels of all other companies.
From the LKML
I've heard such statements before. They remind me of SCO and their lawyers back in the last decade, when they accused Linux of containing copyrighted source code.
Result: Not good. I hope it isn't the case for Red Hat.
The presence of the last 4 letters.
Seems like RTS customers are the ones who would have a right to demand the source to whatever GPLed software they bought or been given. And any of them could legally "leak" to Grover. Not sure how RTS currently has any obligations to Grover, though. Why would they?
Remember that GPL is about protecting users. As handy as it usually is for developers, that's incidental; it's not for developers.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So a Red Hat Developer is trying to get companies to stop allowing their devs time to work on GPL projects? Because firing allegations around and even the possibility of lawsuits is exactly the FUD that companies need to say, "oh hell no - we are staying well out of that; no more contributions to that Linux thing".
Hi Alan and others,
I've been advising Rising Tide Systems (RTS) in this matter. Please let me reassure you that RTS is acting on advice of counsel.
RTS (and specifically Nicholas Bellinger) wrote the scsi target code and owns its copyright. We registered that copyright at the Library of Congress. RTS contributed a version of the scsi target to Linux for distribution under the GPL. On behalf of Marc Fleischmann, CEO of RTS, I can reassure you that RTS remains committed to the Linux project and will continue to contribute to it. We are pleased that RTS software is a part of the Linux distribution under the GPL.
RTS also has a commercial software business. It distributes versions of its scsi target code that support features and functions not officially in Linux (or at least, not yet). That commercial RTS business includes the licensing of those derivative works of its own code to its own customers. Nothing whatsoever in the GPL or in the policies of the Linux Foundation prohibits that.
I would also like to address some comments made on these lists by Andy Grover and Bradley Kuhn.
First, I hope that we can tone down the arguments about whether the use of Linux APIs and headers automatically turns a program into a derivative work
of Linux. I think that argument has been largely debunked in the U.S. in the recent decision in Oracle v. Google, and in Europe in SAS v. World
Programming. Does anyone here question whether the original work that RTS contributed to Linux (and that *is* under the GPL) is an original work of
authorship of RTS despite the fact that it links to other GPL code using headers and APIs?
Second, we are grateful for the efforts that Bradley Kuhn and others put in to enforce the GPL. As I said above, RTS owns and has registered the
copyright on its scsi target and will enforce it if necessary. So Brad, we may solicit your assistance if we find any third party who is distributing
an unauthorized non-GPL derivative work of the scsi target now in Linux. RTS, of course, retains the exclusive right to do so, but no third party can
do so without a license from RTS.
Best regards, /Larry
P.S. In accordance with my obligations as an attorney when communicating with a represented person, I am copying attorneys for Red Hat and Linux Foundation on this email. If anyone wishes to respond to me, please copy me directly since I am not subscribed to these lists.
Lawrence Rosen
The same issue can occur with commercial code too.
It's basically a risk for any non-completely-free licence, including explicitly non-paid-for ones.
You can be put in exactly the same position by being accused by a commercial vendor of using their code.
And the solution for the vendor is the same - sue for copyright infringement, and it'll come out if the code is infringing or not.
There are so many things wrong with the summary I last count. "Its proprietary"? Its proprietary what? Oh, I'm sorry, you just don't know the difference between "its" and "it's". A competitor to Red Hat does not have to hand over its source code to Red Hat even if its product does use GPLed code. That's not how the GPL works. The GPL states that if source code is GPLed then the distributor must offer to provide the source code to anyone who receives a binary. Unless Red Hat is a customer of this company and have purchased devices with the code, then the GPL does not apply.
Are there companies out there leaving their copyrighted code on the net just trying to get you to fix it for them for free?
It's not exactly the same thing. Also note: This is code they contributed to Linux. They retain rights and can dual license.
With commercial code I sign an explicit non-compete, have no doubt who owns the code and (wait for it) get paid.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Soon it will turn into Murder She Wrote...
I prefer Perry Mason myself
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No we would just be using something else. Very rarely are someone or something's inventions non obvious that wouldn't soon be developed by someone else in a slightly different form.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Presumably because Grover as the Red Hat SCSI target maintainer (or, more likely, Red Hat as his employer) contributed, under the GPL, code (patches, etc.) to the piece of Linux he accuses RTS of infringing, thus what Grover is doing is accusing RTS of infringing the copyright on his (or Red Hat's) code by not complying with the GPL with regard to that code.
The GPL, like all copyright licenses written or chosen by the licensor with a take-it-or-leave-it choice for the licensee is used by copyright owners to protect the interests of the copyright owner; its not a contract, so users don't even have the arguable enforcement rights they might have as intended third-party beneficiaries of a contract. Now, it may be that the FSF, as the original authors and users (as licensors) of the GPL had, as their interests in mind for it to protect, what they perceived to be the general public interest or the interests of end-users. But it would be a mistake to forget that its for copyright owners, first, last, and only.
If you read the list, it is clear that no one is disputing the facts of what happened; no one is making unfounded assumptions. Rising Tide Systems has a SCSI module that they have written entirely from scratch. In the process of writing this they pushed much of it into the kernel, so much in fact that one of their employees became the Linux SCSI targets maintainer. They have kept some of it back and are shipping a modified kernel containing their code to customers without providing the source code.
They believe that this is allowed, and that their code is not a derivative work of the kernel. Basically RTS is saying: If NVIDIA can have proprietary drivers, why can't we have proprietary kernel subsystems? The other side believes that what NVIDIA is doing likely is a GPL violation, and furthermore some of the technicalities that NVIDIA claims make it legal don't apply to what RTS is doing.
This issue has been ticking time bomb ready to go off. It is entirely possible that some, all, or none of the proprietary drivers written are a violation of the GPL. It all depends on the courts interpretation of derivative work, and no one knows for certain (although some arguments have stronger precedent than others). Furthermore, it is too late to add GPL linking exception to Linux's license to clarify this (one way or the other), because there are too contributors at this point to come to an agreement. So it will remain murky as mud until someone finally sues someone over the issue. Sounds like this may actually be happening. But even then, the ruling may end up depending on the nature of the proprietary extension, and thus remain fuzzy.
If you don't comply with the GPL, than at most, you are violating copyright law.
Following the GPL is optional. It grants you certain rights if you follow it.
You might have those rights anyway, or you might decide it's better to pay the fines for copyright violation, but I don't see how you can be forced to follow the GPL.
Why they dont just give it to him. What's he going to do, hack em? Been there done that. What else is he going to do, compete with them? Maybe they need competition...
OR maybe they will inspire him and help him learn about how things work behind the scenes, so they have a ready made and well prepared employee who's actually INTERESTED in what they do...
And maybe he shares it with others, and they start to understand too, and make life more entertaining for everyone by developing augmentive features, add ons, different ideas and perspective and spin on the way the company does business....
Perhaps if companies were more interested in community building, sharing, and and teamwork and variety they might actually be MORE successful...
Morpheus like... HMMMMMM
Red Hat hires a software development consultant who is not competing with RTS to examine the code (probably a respected academic). After signing an NDA with RTS, they give him access to the source control archive. He pokes around in the commit history and writes his report. If there *is* infringement, it'll show up and RTS pays the consultant's fee and desists from using the GPL'd code. If there is no evidence of infringement, Red Hat pays the consultant's fee and issues an apology.
Note that I said this *should* be easy to resolve. If RTS is deliberately infringing the GPL, they won't go along with this reasonable suggestion. If Red Hat is just trying to stick a thumb in a competitor's eye while scoring some trade secrets, they wouldn't agree with the suggestion. Both conditions might apply at the same time.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Also note: This is code they contributed to Linux. They retain rights and can dual license.
As long as the code they contributed isn't a derivative work you are right. (Good luck figuring out if it is or is not a derivative work or not.)
Work bio at MMWD
You end up with a suspicious competitor that runs around demanding to see your proprietary code, and you end up in court eventually defending yourself. If everyone used a BSD style license this wouldn't be an issue and wouldn't bog things down. ( much as the patent war is doing in the non-free world )
Personally, if someone came to me demanding to see my internal work, id tell them to f-off and sue me. If they can convince a judge to get involved, after they lose, ill sue for damages and own them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I agree somewhat. I believe many things are patented which shouldn't be, because usually they are violated not by someone copying an inovation, but by someone putting the obvious puzzle pieces together. On the other hand, I don't think we should easily dismiss something so successful on the basis of it being obvious. I think there's something to be said about putting a polish on something, offering it on a fairly open hardware platform(while Windows is not open, you are not walled into one single hardware provider), and making it intuitive enough for the average person. Computers are extremely complex, yet people on the completely opposite end of that spectrum can leverage them. There's something to be said for that.
There is an art to getting all the pieces to fit together, be polished, and be intuitive. I don't think I'd want any of my less tech savvy relatives/friends have to deal with people who do nothing but flame them and tell them to go read the man page whenever something is not intuitive. Some people take pride in being able to use something that isn't inherently difficult, except the fact that it is difficult only because it is non-intuitive. As such they berate anyone who isn't willing to go through the same painful learning curves they have, and have little interest in making it more intuitive. Praise be those in the Linux community who are a little more humble and strive to ease people into Linux adoption.
Ummm, no. Wasn't Microsoft, it was Quarterdeck (DESQview, DESQview/X).
Assuming the code in question falls under GPL that gives no one the right to request it, unless he is a customer.
If you sell me a device, plus binary code like drivers, where the source code is under GPL then I have the right to request the source code.
If I'm just a random nitpicker who has not said binary code, I have no righs to demand the source code.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wasn't Amiga multitasking even before Windows? I mean for a comparable price. SGI Irix and other Unix machines of that time were not "Personal" computers if price is considered.
Amiga per-emptivly multi-tasked, but didn't have protected memory.
Better then pre-X mac OS, about equal to windows 3.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
UNIX preemptively multitasked in 1969. Kinda predates Amiga.
The earliest example of a protected memory model using separated memory paging I can think of is OS/2 (1987).
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The earliest example of a protected memory model using separated memory paging I can think of is OS/2 (1987).
So +1 for Microsoft?
"His name was James Damore."
First off this is nothing like the Oracle case. That was a case about reimplementing APIs, and has nothing to do with linking against someone-else's code that provides APIs. Secondly, it is a stretch to say that the RTS SCSI target is just including APIs. It is using all sorts of internal kernel functions that go far beyond what most reasonable programmers would consider to be an API to the kernel. If you interpret things that liberally, then any proprietary modifications to a GPL application would be allowed by just bundling up the list of functions you happen to use and calling it an API.
weeeeell... +0.5 since it was a collaboration with IBM. :)
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Play poker or engineer software?
The commerce in commercial software doesn't make it problematic but the choices made can. If you make the same kinds of choices, for whatever/different, reasons, you might end up with the same product.
It was Grover who started this, not Airlie.
The link to the lkml thread confused me.
Since they registered the copyright (which would include the first 50 pages of the code) that should be relatively easy to figure out.
Note: using the Linux headers does not create a derivative work. See Oracle vs Google et al.
and be replaced by the BSD license. What RH is doing is sickening and as another pointed out, very much SCO like. And lets not pretend that there is no software released under the BSD or similar license either (see PostgreSQL for one). While I loved Slackware for over a decade, one of the reasons I switched to FreeBSD was the GPL (and the legions of Stallman). It will be a very happy day when FreeBSD is rid of the last of remains of GPL.
So RedHat can accuse RTS of using GPL code but it can't sue unless it holds the copyright of that GPL code. If a 3rd party contributed GPL code that has made it into RTS's propitiatory code, only that 3rd party can sue. And RTS could simply offer to purchase the rights or rewrite.
I can't see why RedHat would pursue this at all.
Oracle v. Google was not about GPL.
Yes, it WAS about GPL, in a roundabout way.
- Oracle v. Google was about whether using an API makes a work derivative of the API, creating a copyright violation if the API is copyrighted and the user did not have a license. The answer was a big "NO!"
- GPL is about using copyright to force derivative works of GPLed code to also remain open, by only licensing them on terms that include propagating the license. (The point is to prevent a pathology of releasing into public domain, which allows people to create derived works and copyright them, locking the authors and public out of the improvements to the original work.)
Because Oracle v. Google declares that using an API does not make a work derivative, it directly affects GPL: The precedent establishes that GPL does not propagate through the use of GPLed APIs, even though GPLed code was not at issue in the trial.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Actually the Perq workstation used paging back in 1978. Brian Rosen, the original designer, had a falling out with the folks at Xerox PARQ over paging vs. . And VM was originally used in mainframes in the 1960s. The same is true of preemptive multitasking, and a lot of other stuff - the real guts of OS. If software had been patentable back then, a lot of important stuff would have been kept proprietary for two decades and we'd still be using an abacus to do arithmetic. Which is why software patents, whether pragmatic or not, are ultimately unfair - stuff I did back in the late 1970s and early 1980s were a lot more interesting and difficult than one-click ordering and rounded corners. So for that reason alone, the change in 1986 to allow software patents was a violation of all that's good, right and holy. Imagine if Tim Berners-Lee had patented the World Wide Web? (which was inspired in large part by the NeXT computer's user environment and NeXTMail - much of which could also have been patented under present rules.)
The present situation is akin to the inventor of the internal combustion engine not being granted patents, but painting the side of the car blue being patentable. But I know, I rant off-topic.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I and an employer put a ton of code out under GPL. We had an arrangement, like TrollTech and MySQL, that contributors could only get their contributions into our trunk if they gave us copyright. (Otherwise, the licencing terms clearly stated, they could strip off our licensing terms, fork, and put out a derivative strictly under GPL that we wouldn't touch.) This was plainly stated, contributors agreed to it, and most certainly, all of our code and that of our contributors has always been made available under GPL in addition to our ownership of the original copyright. It was even clearly stated on our wiki and in our source files how this works and that we might license the code commercially. One day, some dude comes along and contributes like a single line of code. Unless he was blind, he read the licensing and contribution terms. Then years later he "discovers" that that very same employer put out a commercial product based on this code that we had original copyright for. As if a company that developed a bunch of IP wasn't going to use it in their products? But he claims they're violating the GPL, makes a big stink about it, and then he brings up again a few more years later, and someone on one of the tech news sites picks it up, and it gets worse from there.
I'm a huge fan of the GPL, but I'm sick of these dipwads who can't distinguish between a version licensed under GPL and the original work that's derived from. Meanwhile, they brainwash a bunch of other losers into thinking we're doing something wrong, while the whole time, we've worked carefully to ensure that we've been 100% precise and explicit and open about our intentions and careful attention to the terms of the GPL. (And BTW, I'm married to a lawyer, so I have extra help being ultra-precise about the GPL and copyright law.) To those people, the GPL is a religion, and anything not under GPL is evil. Moreover, anything related to a GPL'd work MUST be a derivative of the GPL'd work (not the other way around), because no commercial company is ever capable of producing anything that good, and when they release works under GPL, they must have hidden motives.
In our case, the only reason we bothered to retain original copyright was because we were making open source HARDWARE and hoped to be able to fund development by commercially licensing our IP, which we did, which was the main reason we were able to build real hardware in the first place, which everyone knew we were going to have to do, which is why we added those licensing terms in the first place. Hardware is expensive to manufacture. Because of this (and plenty of other contributors and some donations), we were successful at producing 100% open source hardware.
Sometimes, I feel like some of these people actually know they're being idiots. They're trolling, and they're doing it in an intentional attempt to derail an open source project. Like they're bribed by Microsoft, there to stir up trouble for FOSS projects by making political waves. But someone will come along and point out that if you have to choose between malice and stupidity, stupidity is the more probable option.
Personally, my motivation is to make things that work and contribute to the global mindshare. It's not so much source code that I want to share. Source code is only one form of expression. It's KNOWLEDGE that I want to share. And I enjoy creating new knowledge. Now, we always have to consider the ethical consequences of what we do in science. We do science to improve the world, so if there's some way we might harm it instead, we have to find alternatives. But I'm tired of these jerks whose sole purpose in life seems to be to confuse people and make life all-around more difficult for everyone. This is just as bad as people who try to legislate creationism into the science class. (But you know what, they do this because they're jobless losers with too much time on their hands; the rest of us actually have useful work to do.)
RTS is shipping a non-(completely)-GPL driver module with their GPL'd Linux.
SmartOS is shipping a non-GPL Unix with a GPL'd KVM driver module.
Both are shipping a combined work that should be covered by GPL or compatible license but... aren't.
Are there companies out there leaving their copyrighted code on the net just trying to get you to fix it for them for free?
<sarcasm>isn't that how BSD works?</sarcasm>
With commercial code I sign an explicit non-compete, have no doubt who owns the code and (wait for it) get paid.
What stops you from doing that with open source? You don't even need a non-compete or copyright license for that anyway, it's already covered by work for hire.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Actually I remember when win 95 came out and I thought they had finally caught up with the Amiga, then I saw it at RadioShack and realized they still weren't quite there. Once the Pentium 2 came out and there was finally enough horsepower that Windows was finally faster than my Motorola 68060 50mhz A3000. About 3 years later I bought a Dual P2 333mhz Intel Server with 7 4.3GB SCSI drives and installed Linux. The OS was still powerful but the Amiga hardware was too far behind by then. I've never used Windows on my home workstation although I did build my Son a computer for college with XP on it. Installing and updating that did nothing to endear windows to me although I have to admit it ran well. Whoever says windows is easier to install than linux is crazy. My brother-in-law put XP on his computer to replace ME and his scanner never worked again. He said it was worth it not to have to reboot every 30 minutes anymore. When I look back I still can't believe such a piece of shit OS ended up being so dominant. It looked like Win 95 was alpha and Win 98 was beta then XP was the full release version. I used it at work and with a full blown IT department half our computers still stayed fucked. It's much better nowadays of course, it was flaky for a while on vista but when they went to Win7 it became rock stable. My first computer was a 1mhz C64 with 64 Kilobytes of RAM now I've got a quad i7. It's been an interesting and fun ride.
> Pick up SCSI.
It is too heavy.
> Pick up SCSI
You now have SCSI
But not on a PC, which was the criteria here, right? So, perhaps not.
I do, however, have a predates-Amiga candidate: OS/9 for 6809. From 1979. The Amiga was 1985.
OS/9 6809 was spectacular for its day. For a 1 mhz system to run a whole bunch of terminals (which could just as easily be other computers... I used SS50 systems with graphics cards and keyboards attached to a parallel port on the CPU card), each client with access to the OS/9 machine's various I/O and other facilities... and using almost no memory... just awesome. Had a really decent scheduler, too -- guaranteed even the lowest priority process would get at least a little time.
I oughta drag that sucker out and set it up and run it. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Let's not forget CMS, MVT, MFT, etc. I'm not sure whether JESS was before Microsoft's "multi-tasking" or not. I know that Unix was though.
For that matter, I think I remember that MSWindows was derived from VMS, but with the security and multi-taksing deleted because "personal computers don't need that". But it could have been NT rather than MSWind.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Red Hat this. Red Hat that. Blah, blah, blah. Quit your b**ching.
Red Hat is the "Microsoft" of the free software world. They think if you don't do it their way; you're doing it wrong.
UNIX preemptively multitasked in 1969. Kinda predates Amiga.
The earliest example of a protected memory model using separated memory paging I can think of is OS/2 (1987).
If by "separated memory paging" you mean "paging in separate per-process address spaces", the earliest example I can think of is the Berkeley Timesharing System on the SDS 940 (1966 or so), followed by Multics (1969), TSS/360 (1967 or so), and TENEX (1968-1970 or so).
(Given that you mention UNIX in 1969, you're not restricting this to OSes running on IBM-compatible PCs.)
Let's not forget CMS, MVT, MFT, etc.
If we're talking pre-PC, let's not forget CTSS.
For that matter, I think I remember that MSWindows was derived from VMS, but with the security and multi-taksing deleted because "personal computers don't need that". But it could have been NT rather than MSWind.
The main architect of NT was Dave Cutler, who was, as far as I know, also the main architect of VMS, so there are similarities in the innards (same "16 time-sharing priorities, 16 real-time priorities" scheduling model and similar I/O subsystem, for example). However, the multi-tasking was definitely not deleted from NT, nor was the security (in the sense of having user IDs and process credentials and ACLs on files, at least in NTFS, and on other objects).
"Classic" MS Windows antedated Cutler, and had no VMS influences I know of.
I had a three button mouse with a wheel a year before Microsoft sold one. It was a Genius EasyScroll. Kind of clunky, and the wheel didn't click, but I liked it.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Unix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system)
Just because you make a license like the GPL and you get people to use it, that does not automagically grant you access to the source code of other people so you can go on a fishing expedition. If microsoft contributes some GPL'ed code to Linux to support VMs, Linux people do not magically get to demand to see all Microsoft's VM-related source code for their entire product line to "prove they are innocent" of GPL violations. The courts are not generally inclined to like people who throw accusations around without any proof and say "prove you're not guilty!"
ok, so Xenix in 1980, 1 year after OS/9; Interactive Unix in 1985, 6 years later; Coherent in 1983, 4 years later.
Predates the Amiga, but not OS/9.
Anyone else?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
GPL is the license of choice for unemployed nerds, or thise who want to make sure the competition can never charge money for it.
BSD style licenses is really the only ones you can safely use if you got a job. No risk that you company has to give its product source code to the competition.
Yes, it is dangerous for small companies to take giants amounts of other people's R&D on Linux and use it selfishly. If you're going to use a large body of public code licensed under the GPL, and then figure out loopholes such that you don't release derivative work based on it, expect that you will be considered a bad member of the software community for doing so. If that's not acceptable to you, you shouldn't have used all of the Linux code freely provided to you without thinking about that. The GPL is a written contract, but along with it is an implied social contract that involves releasing code. Companies can ignore that social part, but it's unwise to think it doesn't matter.
If you're considering building software on Linux and are so disconnected from the expectations of its developers that you're not aware of the controversy around topics like Tivoization, you really haven't done your homework.
Microsoft does this with code sharing...I have a feeling it's to taint developers for future legal action, but I'm a paranoid
For interactive software? Everything.
For batch software? Nothing.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Not the headers no, but considering you can't use the Linux scsi core subsystem without Linux, the operating system, I would consider that a derivative (unless there's another OS that their subsystem can also be compiled to run into, maybe). That said, they do hold the copyright for all files they wrote, and if there was a large body of code which was OS platform independent, I'd assume that those pieces could be used in other closed source competing products. The fact that their other 'closed source'; version of code is also running on Linux is definitely a non-trivial knot to address in regards to what parts are and what parts aren't 'derived' in the closed source version of the sub-system.
Bye!
So RTS develop a chunk of code under gpl for the Linux kernel, and (presumably) at that point fork the project under which that code was developed, into two - their own proprietary version that they continue proprietary development on, and a static copy of what was provided under gpl, with the Linux community providing contributions to the gpl version.
Now, RH suspect that RTS have taken some of those contributions from the gpl version and incorporated them into the proprietary version, and are demanding the proprietary source code to be able to audit that.
From my layman's standpoint, the onus is on RH to provide reasoning behind their suspicions and demands (they need something more than "we think it might have happened, and we are curious to see what is in the code"), and then the gpl and proprietary code and change logs both need to be submitted for a 3rd party audit, with the auditors signing a NDA.
or a time machine and lots of desperate repeated attempts
no actually that's the problem with microsoft
not as awesome as drinking beer from a bottle.... BRILLIANT!!!!!
Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)
:)
ftfy...if not me someone else would have
Wasn't Amiga multitasking even before Windows? I mean for a comparable price. SGI Irix and other Unix machines of that time were not "Personal" computers if price is considered.
Amiga (TRIPOS) had pre-emptive multi-tasking. The Acorn Archimedes (under RISC OS) had co-operative multi-tasking, like the later Windows 3.1. Under UN*X, of course, it had pre-emptive multi tasking. Microsoft were, as with everything else, late to the game.
While talking of RISC OS, it had the neatest use of a three button mouse and the neatest use of menus of any GUI I've ever seen - it amazes me that someone hasn't yet done an X11 GUI with similar features.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Otherwise some asshole will demand to see your source to prove you didn't lift anything.
But the asshole can demand all they like, you just tell them to piss off. They'll have to go to court, and accuse you of infringing the copyright of their code, and then they'd first have to show that they have code that is infringed, _and_ convince a court that you have to hand over the code, and then they still don't get the code - their lawyers do, they can show it to an expert, but if those lawyers or experts showed any code to Redhat, there would be hell to pay.
How do we know this wasn't a setup to ensure RTS don't get challenged?
Perhaps the code is GPL derived and the easiest way to get everyone off their backs is to conspire with RedHat do something that won't go big - this will quickly go away and everyone will once again thank Redhat for the huge contribution they provide to our day to day lives like it or not and get on with it...
Just another point of view...
Thanks Redhat and thanks RTS.
Good point.
Or perhaps simply a good way to get some publicity for a new RTS product?
It's not like all that holywood stuff in the magazines isn't a setup form which actors make a profit or that this happen all the time these days
Erm, no.
That's not how it works.
"Prove you don't have fairies living at the bottom of the garden."
"Erm, I can't."
"Witch!"
Burden of proof is on the accuser, I'm afraid, otherwise the world would be a bully's paradise.
Ahh, the PERQ. Good times.
Let us not forget KMS, a hyptertext system predating both "the WWW" and Apple's Hypercard.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0031.html
http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS01/hc/www/
Thanks! Slip of the brain, there. :)
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/11/05/0122238/bruce-perens-answers-your-questions
I fully agree with Bruce. Sometimes I feel the commercial opensource companies are worse than the commercial closed source companies in some ways. At the regular commercial companies are upfront about the fact they are in it just to make money.
Try figuring licensing terms of different components of MySQL. For eg. try to figure out what components of MySQL Cluster you can also use free of charge without paying for support & what has to be purchased. Ask a question on some public forum where there are lots of MySQL employees active. They will never give the answer on the forum. They will always ask you to contact them offline.
Ah, that brings back memories. Loved DESQview, and QEMM that made it possible.
Thanks for the memories...
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
FreeBSD for the win!
It's kind of funny how copyright might be used to force one to divulge information. Copyright is supposed to provide property rights over information, yet here it's being used to attempt someone to divulge a secret. If there was ever a right over information the right to keep it to yourself is it. Not that I care much about someone else's supposed right to keep a secret as I sit here using GPL software that I didn't pay for. As long as nobody stops me from doing something I want to do, or makes me do something I don't want to do, I guess I don't have skin in this.
...
I'll get off your lawn.
Get your own free personal location tracker
There is also he ICL 1900 series from had 1968/9 or so, which had addressing for each program using a base and limit address.
Well a lot of companies beat them to it.
Desqview,
OS 2
Linux.
Slackware Linux was release 17 July 1993
Windows NT was released 27 July 1993
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
http://cinetara.in/photos/anuhya-reddy-hot-spicy-stills-tollywood-34748/
RedHat has to demonstrate that the code is in violation. RTS does not have to "prove" that it is not. Basic legal process. The burden is on RedHat, not RTS. Remember innocent until proven guilty?
No, if Redhat bought or was given a copy AND it's GPL then they are entitled to source. The company apparently claims to have both a commercial AND a GPL version of their stuff. Which one was sold/given to them?
The issue here is whether or not Rising Tide backported other's contributions from their GPL version which would be a violation of the GPL.
Except RTS is in full agreement that they are using modules containing code committed by third parties, including those that Andy has pointed out. They have not disputed this at all. What is in dispute is whether combining their proprietary module with the GPL kernel and other GPL modules and is a GPL violation. They are pushing the boundary of the "using APIs is not a derivative work" argument to it's limits.
They can go ahead and sue for copyright infringement. If their license is being broken, they might even win.
That's it. That's all the the GPL gives you. This is not hard to understand.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Also, cheers to Microsoft for bringing multitasking to the PC. Now I can watch my game stutter uncontrollably, while my music buffers." - TFTFY
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Acorn's RISC OS had it earlier (the memory model).
Not a single shit was given. Interestingly, the commercial company can actually afford lawyers. Also, I think the burden of proof lies on the Red Hat fellows.
I don't see how this is any different from how the linux kernel community always treats their commercial contributors.
Windows 3 didn't have memory protection either. NT 3.1 had it first, followed by WinXP on the home front.
OK, it's classic MSWind I'm talking about (3.x and earlier) so it must have been something earlier than VMS...that I no longer remember the name of. I *THINK* is was running on a DEC machine, though. I never actually used it directly, but roff (ancestor of groff, troff, etc.) ran on it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's really fuqqin' neato!
Or how about Xenix in 1982?
Which was also used to run RS232 networks from various low end micros
"GPL violation" is Slashdot shorthand for "infringement of copyright by somebody whose only license to make and distribute copies of a particular work is the GPL".
For example, I may buy a book, and I may give it to someone else (in fact I think it's OK to sell it to someone else) - this is covered by first sale.
This does not necessarily apply if you acquired the book outside your home country. See Kirtsaeng v. Wiley , pending before the Supreme Court of the United States.
A truly great-for-its-day OS, although slightly ludicrous - multitasking on a 1MHz machine in 64k addressable space (ok it could be paged).
Not so ludicrous -- the commands were only a few k each. You could do a lot.
I'll tell ya what seems ludicrous to me... 50 megabytes for a silly, one function utility or a little game. I'll grant you that when the processor has words and instructions 4x the width of a 6809, then I'll readily buy that any one comparable app or command could be 4x the size (though you'd think those instructions would be more sophisticated and buy you more), but I see sizes that can only be explained by incredibly bad software technology at some level; language, or tools, or actual design.
Check this out.
ls, a basic "dir" shell command on my mac, is 80k.
dir, a reasonably comparable 6809 command, is about 600 bytes. That's over 130x smaller. And that's pretty typical. So you can think of the memory under OS/9 as being that much more useful.
OS/9 also supported various means of extending memory -- I had a 256k SS-50 memory card, and it worked fine, paging memory in and out in 4k chunks.
It really was an effective, useful OS, within the limitations of what you can do in a shell, which is a lot more than many people realize, frankly. Graphics were strictly an outside-the-OS afterthought on a per-program and per-card basis.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I worked for the company during some of the glory years. The IPO was the beginning of the end, as it so often is. I'd like to track down Theresa now and ask her, "what were you thinking?"
Wow, the GP just got out-nerded.
ls, a basic "dir" shell command on my mac, is 80k.
dir, a reasonably comparable 6809 command, is about 600 bytes. That's over 130x smaller. [...]
ls is probably mostly used just to list files in the current directory. But you can do a hell of a lot more with it than that.
ls -hl will give you file permissions, number of files in directories, owner info, size (conveniently formatted), modification time, the name (conveniently coloured to quickly identify directories etc). You can hide stuff filtered by pattern ( --hide), dereference symbolic links, sort by filesize (-S) etc.
I'm not sure the actual size of command line *nix programs is out of proportion (more than 50 options some of which are really powerful and complicated vs. 130 size increase and 8-bit vs. 64-bit)
Now, when talking about your average humongous GUI'ed typewriter (Word) I completely agree. As illustrated by the 16GB required by the msPad for software.
Well, insofar as there *were* flags and size and file types, you could control those, and various listing formats. But sure, nix files are much more complex beasties. Still, 80k? I'm thinking a person with an assembler could do it in a lot less. That's how all the 6809 commands were built. Of course, a person writing in assembler is spending their time all on one platform... and that's why we don't do it any longer.
And yeah, when we get to OO apps.... they're incredibly weighty.
Anyway OS/9 did ok for the size and speed of the computer it ran on. We had accounting, spreadsheets, assemblers, compilers, text processors, and some really decent text editing (keeping in mind that the output was a daisy wheel printer, lol.) I can still use that editor. It runs not only under 6809 OS/9, but also under 6809 Flex, which I have ready on the desktop at all times. Makes for a very nice text editor, I use it to kick 6809 assembler around. Used to use them a lot. 6809's, I mean.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Windows 3 relied on cooperative multitasking (which was a joke of a multitask BTW).
You cannot seriously compare that primitive environment to the preemptive multitasking Amiga provided.
That doesn't necessarily follow. They're only comparable if they're performing the same functions, and the size of ls suggests that it's probably bigger than dir because it's doing a lot more.
Have you actually compared the source code of the two commands?
Posting to undo accidental moderation