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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...
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.
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.
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.
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'
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.
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.
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).
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.
Not so. The key issue is that NVIDIA does not ship a kernel with their driver, and that the driver is very obviously not based off the Linux kernel. But don't take my word for it.
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.
That would be correct if and only if the vendor is providing the source code along with the device. If they aren't, then GPL v2 section 3b applies:
Emphasis mine. It doesn't say just customers. It doesn't say just people who have the binaries. It says "any third party". That means any third party, no further restrictions or conditions. The GPL v3 would let you limit your obligation to provide source to only those who have the binaries, but the Linux kernel is under GPL v2 without the clause allowing use of later versions.
Happened more then once.
BSD code gets incorporated into GPL package. Some twit does a simple minded binary search vs. obj files generated from GPL source. Finds match to BSD code block that was included in GPL package, claims violation, jumps up and down yelling 'evil evil'. Rinse/repeat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you read the list, it is clear that no one is disputing the facts of what happened
Actually, the Red Hat guy supposes some of the GPL code made it's way into RTS:
"Second, you claim you hold exclusive copyright for the code. Not true. One example: on http://www.risingtidesystems.com/storage.html you claim support for FCoE. You didn't build tcm_fc, Intel did. Under the GPLv2. Furthermore, SRP support came from SCST, iirc. None of these contributors gave RTS any right to use their copyrighted code except under the conditions of the GPLv2."
Another issue is if RTS distributes a product that combines their "standalone" module with the Linux kernel. It's unclear to me just what RTS distributes and in what fashion.
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).
The RTS lawyer says:
"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?"
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Emphasis mine. It doesn't say just customers. It doesn't say just people who have the binaries. It says "any third party". That means any third party, no further restrictions or conditions.
I think your interpretation is wrong. If company A makes a special binary for company B along with an offer for source code, then random company C can't come and demand the source code for company B's version. The FSF FAQ says:
(...) When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. (...) The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.
That is to say, if you have an offer they must honor it no matter who you are. If you don't have an offer, you get nothing. It's like a cashier's check, whoever holds it can cash it. But no check, no money.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
the onus is on the ACCUSER to prove his case, not the other way round!
Prove It!
For interactive software? Everything.
For batch software? Nothing.
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Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)
:)
ftfy...if not me someone else would have
Red Hat contributes heavily to Linux, but they use tons of code which have been written by people who haven't been paid by them & they make money off it. But they don't want Oracle to make money off code Red Hat wrote. So they make it difficult for Oracle. What if the millions of people who wrote free Linux code had made it difficult for Red Hat in the first place.