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Hi Jason, I admire your intentions but there are a few things which you need to understand a bit better. First off, I do not know Lawrence Lessig or his involvement, so I do not understand how he made your list. On the other hand, Eben Moglen is arrogant and unscrupulous. His stated goal is to steal as much software as possible and put it under the GPL even when doing so is illegal. If you give him a valid and sound argument why the "legal advice" he has given is obviously illegal, the very most you will get from him is a facetious reply asking where you are licensed to practice law. -I know this from experience because it is the exact reply I got from him after emailing him this: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=118901954525700&w=2 Whether they realize it or not, the other two clowns on your list, Bradley M. Kuhn and Matt Norwood (as well as Richard Fontana and Karen Sandler who also signed off on it) are really nothing than expendable cannon fodder for the FSF war against reality. Eben being crafty and cowardly, he decided not to put his name on the list of FSF lawyers signing off on the code theft. Since anyone could easily complain to the Bar Association about lawyers giving out bogus legal advice, and possibly cause them to be disbarred, cowardly Eben is letting others take the fall. http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=118857712529898&w=2 Signed-Off-By: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@softwarefreedom.org> Signed-Off-By: Matt Norwood <norwood@softwarefreedom.org> Signed-Off-By: Richard Fontana <fontana@softwarefreedom.org> Signed-Off-By: Karen Sandler <karen@softwarefreedom.org> Most of us are also aware of the instance where OpenBSD took some GPL code and replaced the license with BSD. What OpenBSD did in that cases was just as illegal, just as immoral and just as wrong but it was corrected when it was discovered in one of the dev branches of cvs. In the case of Ryek's code, the reverse is true but instead of admitting the mistake and making the ...
On Sat, Sep 15, 2007 at 03:33:18AM -0700, J.C. Roberts wrote: <the clearest public analysis of the situation yet> thank you. I've tried but I get too pissed. -- jakemsr@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org -
OH COME FREAKING ON!!!! Can you guys DROP it already? There was NO VIOLATION because nobody actually changed the code!!! The patch that Jesper submitted was a *MISTAKE* and was *NEVER* *MERGED*!!! Nobody needs to argue/flame/spam about anything because there is no change in the code. My god this has been said 30 times by 30 different people at this point. I swear it feels like talking to a wall. EXHIBIT #1: EXHIBIT #2: EXHIBIT #3: CONCLUSION: You guys are spamming our mailing list for NO GOOD REASON!!!! Can we *please* get back to actual useful development now? Cheers, Kyle Moffett -
You are wrong. http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=118857712529898&w=2 http://madwifi.org/browser/branches/ath5k I suggest actually taking the time to get the facts before making completely baseless statements. When you make obviously erroneous statements, it leaves everyone to believe you are either hopelessly misinformed, or a habitual liar. -Which is it? jcr -
Please take a moment to understand the Linux development process. A better place to look would be 'ath5k' branch of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-dev.git but nonethless, the fact remains that ath5k is STILL NOT UPSTREAM and HAS NEVER BEEN UPSTREAM, as can be verified from git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git (official linux repo; nothing is official until it hits here) Part of the reason why ath5k is not upstream is that developers are actively addressing these copyright concerns -- as can be clearly seen by the changes being made over time. So let's everybody calm down, ok? Regards, Jeff -
Or rather, can everybody please just shitcan those perverted dipshits you are replying to and get on with it? These people are here for one reason only and that's to cause a stir -- however righteous they may feel about themselves, they're nothing but dumb trolls. Please stop feeding. Rene. -
Jeff, Look at what you are saying from a different perspective. Let's say someone took the linux kernel source from the official repository, removed the GPL license and dedicated the work to public domain or put it under any other license, and for kicks back-dated the files so they are older than the originals. Then they took this illegal license removal copy of your code and put it in a public repository somewhere. You'd be perfectly content with such a development because it had not been officially brought "upstream" by the "offical" public domain or whatever project? No, you would most likely be absolutely livid and extremely vocal getting the problem fixed immediately, so your reasoning falls apart. If the people who could fix the problem continued to ignore you, and the people in leadership roles tell you then intend to steal your code, then you would continue to get more angry and vocal about it. Now take it one step further. For the sake of example, let's assume all of this atheros driver nonsense went to a German court and the GNU/FSF/SFLC/Linux or whoever you want to call yourselves lost a criminal copyright infringement suit. You have now been legally proven to be guilty code theft. After such a ruling let's assume some jerk was to do the all the horrific stuff mentioned in the first paragraph above to the linux source tree, along with a little regex magic to call it something other than "linux" and seeded the Internet with countless copies. At this point, the GNU, FSF, GPL and all of the hard working Linux devs are now stuffed. A company could download the bogus source, violate the now missing GPL license, claim you stole the code from someplace else on the `net and illegally put your GPL license on it... Worst of all, they now have your past conviction of criminal code theft to back up their assertion about the way you normally operate. You should be concerned. The above is an immoral and illegal but still practical attack on ...
That's the wonderful thing about open development: our mistakes, and the corrections made to fix mistakes, are out in the open for all to see. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Jeff -
On Sunday, 16 September 2007, J.C. Roberts wrote: Let's say someone took the linux kernel source from the official repository, removed the GPL license and dedicated the work to public domain or put it under any other license, and for kicks back-dated the files so they are older than the originals. Now take it one step further. For the sake of example, let's assume all of this atheros driver nonsense went to a German court and the GNU/FSF/SFLC/Linux or whoever you want to call yourselves lost a criminal copyright infringement suit. You have now been legally proven to be guilty code theft. After such a ruling let's assume some jerk was to do the all the horrific stuff mentioned in the first paragraph above to the linux source tree, along with a little regex magic to call it something other than "linux" and seeded the Internet with countless copies. None of this has happened. What has happened is that people who do not have full possession of the facts and have no legal expertise-- people whom from the very beginning we have been trying to help--have made irresponsible charges and threatened lawsuits, thus slowing down our efforts to help them. It might be useful to recall the first stage of this process, when OpenBSD developers were accused of misappropriating Atheros code, and SFLC investigated and proved that no such misappropriation had occurred? Wild accusations about our motives are even more silly than they are false. We understand that attribution issues are critically important to free software developers; we are accustomed to the strong feelings that are involved in such situations. In the fifteen years I have spent giving free legal help to developers throughout the community, attribution disputes have been, always, the most emotionally charged. But making threats of litigation and throwing around words like "theft" and "malpractice" was a Really Bad Idea, because once some people started using that ...
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2007/jul/31/openhal/ As I said in a former email, this has several glaring problems. As far as I understand, this is a public statement, even if it predates the issue at hand. Please fix it in a timely manner, or take it down for now. -
Most noticeably, I fail to see any credits to Reyk Floeter in the above press release. Moreover, back when the release was first posted at the above address, there was no credit even to the OpenBSD project, which I found simply outrageous! Only after I (and possibly others) have complained to SFLC did they append the release to give some really vague mention that OpenHAL is based on OpenBSD's ath(4) HAL. Eben, is this the work that you are doing in bringing the communities together, by omitting such vital information as giving credit to the people and projects who performed most of the work? After all of these mistakes, after ignoring the ethical side of the relicensing, after failing to inform when relicensing is even legally an option, are you seriously even surprised about the negative attention that SFLC is getting now? Taking a step aside, don't you agree it is well-deserved? http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/13/156258 C. -
Thanks for the detailed response. There have also been some very articulate and fact-oriented responses here from the OpenBSD Misc list as well. I will repeat and elaborate on what I wrote in my first response which I gave the subject "Divide and conquer (was Re: Wasting our Freedom)" Although there are some valid concerns regarding workflow between projects of different licensing families, keep in mind that 1) a license (ie. GPL, BSD, or other) is simply another tool 2) some outside FOSS would like nothing better than to divide FOSS up and set the factions against each other Intentional trolls (agent provacateur) are part of the bag of tricks available to the political groups that have much to gain by playing the various FOSS projects off against each other. Various political parties and factions, not the least of which is MS, lose out if we use our time effectively or if the general public start to understand and apply principles that make for sound, secure, and interoperable systems. Bickering with or harranging the FSF, OBSD, or any other project is less useful than coding, documenting, debugging (even workflow debugging) or teaching. It plays right into MS' media strategy of "Saturate, Diffuse, and Confuse" by filling up the communications channels with noise, thus drowning or diluting the useful material and burning out the casual observer. One of the common tactics seen again and again, including in this case, is the re-circulation of outdated and incorrect sources. Some of the people doing the bickering may just be plainly and simply less than knowledgeable and further handicapped by inability to express themselves. Others may just be 'tards easily goading into action by an agent provacateur and, unless proven otherwise, should be treated as the first group. Regards, -Lars -
Thanks for the detailed response. There have also been some very articulate and fact-oriented responses here from the OpenBSD Misc list as well. I will repeat and elaborate on what I wrote in my first response which I gave the subject "Divide and conquer (was Re: Wasting our Freedom)" Although there are some valid concerns regarding workflow between projects of different licensing families, keep in mind that 1) a license (ie. GPL, BSD, or other) is simply another tool 2) some outside FOSS would like nothing better than to divide FOSS up and set the factions against each other Intentional trolls (agent provacateur) are part of the bag of tricks available to the political groups that have much to gain by playing the various FOSS projects off against each other. Various political parties and factions, not the least of which is MS, lose out if we use our time effectively or if the general public start to understand and apply principles that make for sound, secure, and interoperable systems. Bickering with or harranging the FSF, OBSD, or any other project is less useful than coding, documenting, debugging (even workflow debugging) or teaching. It plays right into MS' media strategy of "Saturate, Diffuse, and Confuse" by filling up the communications channels with noise, thus drowning or diluting the useful material and burning out the casual observer. One of the common tactics seen again and again, including in this case, is the re-circulation of outdated and incorrect sources. Some of the people doing the bickering may just be plainly and simply less than knowledgeable and further handicapped by inability to express themselves. Others may just be 'tards easily goading into action by an agent provacateur and, unless proven otherwise, should be treated as the first group. Regards, -Lars -
Everyone is expecting yet another one of your lovely recommendations which very simply reads: "steal and infect everything you possibly can and refuse to pass on the rights that you have received." http://lwn.net/Articles/248223/ As you do your imaginary "painstaking reconstruction" the whole world can see you refuse to practice what you preach in the supposed "spirit" of your "steal-alike" license because you refuse to pass on the rights When you stated you intend to secure as much code as possible under your license of choice, you mistakenly told the world you had no intention Speaking of "Really Bad Ideas," you trained us. The only time we get any form of response is when we continue to become more loud, more abrasive, more aggressive, and more accusational. As long as people in your camp continue to use your license and lawyers as a weapon to push your "free as in koolaid" political agenda there will be people like me who will stand up and fight against your theft, your malpractice, your stalling tactics and your legal bullying. I hope the name Pavlov rings a bell. jcr -
I don't thinl this helps openbsd or anyone else. As Theo is already working with the individuals involved, and hasn't asked for help, I think rather than saying "I think you're going to suck", let's see what happens. Going ovewrboard isn't going to help anyone. -- "This officer's men seem to follow him merely out of idle curiosity." -- Sandhurst officer cadet evaluation. -
But that isn't the situation being discussed. You've sent this mail to the *LINUX* *KERNEL* ML, not the MadWifi ML. The patches in question were not accepted into the Linux Kernel, so this is *NOT* the place to send mail related to them. *PLEASE* go do a Google search or check the MadWifi site for their discussion Yes, true, but you are attacking people who haven't done anything wrong. And by your own words, Mr. Roberts, OpenBSD has violated peoples copyrights: "Most of us are also aware of the instance where OpenBSD took some GPL code and replaced the license with BSD. What OpenBSD did in that cases was just as illegal," If the OpenBSD developers want to attack the Linux Kernel community over patches that were *NEVER* *ACCEPTED* by said community, it should be just as fair for the Linux Kernel community to complain about those (unspecified) times where OpenBSD replaced the GPL on code with the BSD license. And, as said before, the place to take these complaints is the MadWifi discussion area, since they are, apparently, the only people that accepted *WE*, the people on the Linux Kernel ML, *CANNOT* "fix the problem" with the Linux Kernel != FSF/GNU If it was then RMS would not be attacking Linus and Linux with faulty claims just because Linus has publicly stated that the GPLv2 is a better license than v3 and because Linux cannot, for numerous reasons, ever be released under the GPLv3. I repeat - Linux has *NOT* and will *NEVER* accept the patches in question. If somebody else has, then go and yell at them about it. The developers here, on the LINUX KERNEL MAILING LIST, have no control or authority (in general) over projects such as MadWifi. If they have accepted the faulty patches - and said patches are now part of their code-base, then go tell them about it and make sure Theo gets the message. DRH -- Dialup is like pissing through a pipette. Slow and excruciatingly painful. -
Although it's true the code is not yet upstream... Given that we want support for Atheros (whenever all this mess is sorted), I think it's quite fair to discuss these issues [in a calm, Given that we want it upstream, it is however relevant. We want to make sure we are aware of copyright problems, and we want to make sure any copyright problems are fixed. On a side note: "MadWifi" does not really describe the Linux ath5k driver, the driver at issue here. Some mistakes were made by Linux Amen. 100% agreed. Jeff -
Thanks Jeff. I've been told both on list and off, as well as both
politely and impolitely that including the Linux kernel mailing list
was the wrong thing to do. Though I certainly do take serious issue
with a handful of people at the GNU/FSF/SFLC who have been acting in
bad faith, the code in question is per se "intended" to become part of
the Linux kernel. The code has not been "accepted upstream" as you say
but that is still the intended goal.
Saying something like:
"Linux Kernel != FSF/GNU"
is quite similar to saying:
"Windows != Microsoft"
In both cases, the pairs of terms may not be "equal" but they are
certainly related. Also in both cases, the former term is most often
considered part of the latter term. Just as the Linux kernel is under
the GPL of the FSF/GNU, equally Windows is under EULA of Microsoft. You
are correct in stating a distinction technically exists, yet in common
language of everyday people, the terms are interchangeable even though
it is pedantically incorrect to do so.
Please pardon the comparison with Microsoft, it is not intended as an
insult in any way, but does serve nicely as an example.
There are some extremely talented and altruistic people who put their
hard work under the GPL license. Some of the Linux kernel developers
are on my personal list of ubergeeks deserving hero worship for their
continuous contributions. I am certain some of them are far more fair
minded and well thought than I will ever be.
With that said, if you had been ignored and even stone walled by the
GNU/FSF/SFLC and you wanted to reach the more pragmatic and free
thinking minds which use the GPL license where would you go?
The linux kernel mailing list is the best answer.
As much as you may have disliked my action of involving the Linux kernel
mailing list, please understand it was not an attack, but instead it's
a plea for help on an issue which will, eventually, affect you.
If some of the outstanding members of the linux ...You could equally say that
"OpenBSD != University of California, Berkeley"
was wrong since OpenBSD uses the licence of the UCB. [1]
Or that
"OpenBSD != NetBSD"
was wrong since OpenBSD is just a spinoff of NetBSD, and for everyday
people all the *BSD operating systems are anyway the same.
Or that
"OpenBSD != Linux kernel"
was wrong since although they are not equal, they are related since they
are both open source operating systems.
Or even that
"OpenBSD != FSF"
was wrong.
In case you wonder about the latter, check at [2] whose project's
project leaders won the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software
and whose project's project leader did not.
The FSF and the Linux kernel community have some relationship, but they
are quite distinct communities with different views on some things.
As an example, Linus Torvalds made clear some years ago that the kernel
is GPLv2 only and will stay GPLv2 forever. This makes it impossible to
move the kernel to the FSF's new GPLv3. If you have such differences in
mind it sounds ridiculous when people don't differentiate between the
cu
Adrian
[1] I don't know the background of the 2-clause BSD licence, but at
least for the 3-clause and 4-clause BSD licences this was true
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Award_for_the_Advancement_of_Free_Software
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
-
BTW: never heard someone is using the FreeBSD version of Linux? I did, not once :-) -- Krzysztof Halasa -
Ok, suppose someone did (precisely) this. Then the person to be upset with would be the people who did this, not the people behind the official repository. Some folks seem to be unfortuntaely blaming the people who run the official repository. Look, it's perhaps a little understandable that people in the *BSD world might not understand that the Linux development community is huge, and not understand that the people who work on madwifi.org, the core kernel community, and the FSF, are distinct, and while they might interact with each other, one part of the community can't dictate what another part of the community does. You wouldn't want us to conflate all of the security faults of say, NetBSD with OpenBSD, just because it came from a historically similar code base and "besides all you *BSD folks are all the same --- if you don't want a bad reputation, why don't you police yourselves"? Would you not say this is unreasonable? If so, would you kindly not do the same thing to the Linux community? Secondly, it looks like people are getting worked up about two different things, and in some cases it looks like the two things are getting conflated. The first thing is a screw-up about attribution and removal of the BSD license text, and that is one where the SFLC has already issued advice that this is bad ju-ju, and that the BSD license text must remain intact. The second case which seems to get people upset is that there are people who are taking BSD code, and/or GPL/BSD dual licensed code, and adding code additions/improvements/changes under a GPL-only license. This is very clearly legal, just as it is clearly legal for NetApp to take the entire BSD code base, add proprietary changes to run on their hardware and to add a propietary, patent-encrusted WAFL filesystem, and create a codebase which is no longer available to the BSD development community. The first case was clearly a legal foul, whereas the second case is legally O.K (whether the GPL or NetApp propietary ...
There's no need to CC all those FSF people on this as I'm sure they're plenty busy with other things, have lots of people to dispel FUD for them, and certainly don't need the excess email in their inboxes. Well you seem to have CCed the linux kernel mailing list, so I am talking about the linux kernel sources, not stuff hosted on madwifi.org or other places as I have no knowledge or control over what those maintainers accept or do not accept. If you aren't talking about the Linux kernel itself then you should get your I see these very out-of-date URLs showing people making changes to some already-problematic licenses in various files in some other non- linux-kernel repository. Please note that the Linux kernel does *NOT* contain an atheros driver right now! Therefore this doesn't seem to be the patch posted to LKML I was talking about: Original patch: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/28/157 Responses: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/28/304 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/29/171 http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/29/69 The "madwifi" site is not a linux-kernel branch at *all*. The stuff that gets imported there is totally under the control of the madwifi people and if you want to gripe about copyright *they* are the people you should be griping to. It's like complaining to the OpenBSD developers about copyright issues in some code that NetBSD developers commit to their repository; it just plain doesn't make sense. For starters, I seem to have plenty of references to "the facts" as cited above. You even deleted 3 major references from the email you were *replying* to! Secondly, what the HELL is with you guys and the personal attacks?!?!? You said I am "hopelessly misinformed, or a habitual liar"??? You very carefully snipped out the 3 examples I gave where people were describing how the Linux kernel did the right thing both legally and ethically so you could make those claims? Seriously, if you really want to know what went ...
You are right and I apologize. I've received plenty of personal attacks from your group, and failed to hold my temper when dealing with you. You and the rest of the linux kernel devs need to realize there are a lot of angry people who are tired of being ignored by the powers that be in the GNU/FSF/GPL/SFLC. The claimed distinction between the linux kernel, the linux operating system, the various linux distros, the GNU project, the FSF, and the SFLC is pedantic at best to the rest of the outside world. As far as everyone else on the outside is concerned, you are all one large project working together. When some part of your project is indulging in code theft, it makes all of you look bad, regardless if it's upstream, downstream, sidestream or otherwise. When linux/gpl developers and linux/gpl lawyers refuse to take a stance against code theft, you look like one big happy family doing everything you can to put as much code as possible under your preferred license regardless if it's illegal or immoral. I knew darn well that I wouldn't be winning any new friends in the linux/gpl/gnu camp by voicing an unpopular opinion to your project, but after being ignored, you too would want to find the people on the other side with the spine to stand up and say code theft is wrong. Would you stand by quietly, tolerate being ignored, and accept delay tactics of unethical lawyers if the roles were reverse? Would you be willing to be called every untoward name in the book by voicing your dissenting opinions clearly and loudly? I have. jcr -
