IP Theft in the Linux Kernel 1000
"They just took my code and filed off the copyright" said Søren. "This is clearest with the two header files hptraid.h and pdcraid.h. Compare these with FreeBSD's ata-raid.h, and just look at the similarities." And it's true that these two header files certainly look like a chopped up copy of the FreeBSD header, after a quick search-and-replace. "The reading of the RAID config from the disks is their own code, but is clearly "inspired" from our code," said Søren, "but that's encouraged by the license. It's the verbatim use of the other code without retaining the copyright that's the problem."
ata-raid.h, and the other files, are copyright Søren, and released under the three clause BSD license, which includes the restriction "Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice". So using these files, or significant portions of them, in your own code, without retaining the copyright information, as has happened here, is prohibited.
You may be thinking "This is only a couple of header files, what's the big deal?". As Søren says "The problem here is that the structures in the headers is the whole story. That info tells how you read the proprietary struct off the disks, and was reverse engineered and documented by me after a lot of effort." Søren's intellectual property is tied up in those files.
Right now, Søren is in discussions with the authors of the Linux ATA drivers (employed by RedHat) to ensure that his copyright notice is returned to these and other files, and to ensure that this situation does not recur. And it is hoped that an amicable solution can be reached.
And yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, though, if someone used the code, it must be used under the correct license. Same as if someone uses the linux kernel. They gotta use the GPL.
Again, copyright (and licensing) is a double-edged sword.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't try to reflect this onto Microsoft. Clearly the Linux developers fucked up here.
Good for him! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Licensing Problems? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Er... (BSD License vs the GPL) (Score:2, Informative)
It was removed July 22 1999.
Not the first time (Score:2, Informative)
I don't harbor any resentment against the guy, but this was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm sorry it had to turn out this way.
-anon
(yes, I have an account; no, I'm not going to use it here)
You have old information (Score:2, Informative)
The requirement that a copyright clause remain intact is NOT the same as the dreaded "BSD advertising clause".
In fact, the current BSD license is completely compatible with the GPL (Just remember that the commingled result must be GPLed). See the FSF list of GPL-Compatible licenses [gnu.org].
Skylarov (Score:3, Informative)
Need I say more?
This is not the license you are looking for (Score:3, Informative)
The license in question here is the modified BSD license. (same page, earlier on)
Re:Licensing Problems? (Score:4, Informative)
Since the license is so short, might as well include it right here for people too lazy to click:
Here is the license template:
Copyright (c) ,
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Red Hat source - who is "Arjanv" ? (Score:5, Informative)
Reverse engineering, plagiarism, and theft (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, so Søren reverse engineers the proprietary data structures developed at great cost by corporations, and then bitches when his work is ripped off by one of his fellow Open Source travelers. Give me a break!
First, what Soren did was not plagiarism (claiming another's work as his own) nor theft (stealing another's property). He just made a part that works as a replacement for a factory part, much like the thriving parts industry in the auto world.
What Red Hat's developers did wasn't "theft", since they were not required to have permission to use or modify and re-release the code. It was plagiarism -- essentially they took some of Soren's parts (which were free for the taking), filed off the serial numbers, then stamped their own on.
It's not illegal to sell someone else's parts if you acquired them legally, but it is illegal to claim them as your own make without permission, regardless of how they were acquired.
The only place Soren might have problems is if the driver algorithms were patented, and even there drivers exist in a world of murky law apart from applications. I seem to remember some abortive efforts by sound and video card manufacturers to squash third-party open-source drivers that got such negative press reaction that they were abandoned.
Linux-Kernel Mailing List Info (Score:3, Informative)
linux-kernel@vger.kernel
You don't need to be subscribed to the list to successfully send stuff to it, so post away!
If you actually do want to subscribe to the list send a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org [mailto] with the following in the body:
subscribe linux-kernel malda@slashdot.org
where malda@slashdot.org will be replaced by your email address.
An archive of the list can be found at http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/ [tux.org]
Hope this helps!
Re:Red Hat source - who is "Arjanv" ? (Score:5, Informative)
Arjan van de Ven
Notice also that it appears that the code has been updated to include the proper copyright and notices on the site. Read the diff, and the source all of the stuff has been added. It appears that it should be in compliance with the BSD license now.Re:Licensing Problems? (Score:2, Informative)
How to write "ø" ... (Score:2, Informative)
:)
See also:
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/input8bit.h
and
http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_smasch/X11/multi_keys.
(of course, if you're not running X, this means nothing.)
BRx.
Give proper credit ? (Score:3, Informative)
The Windows FTP command is bassed on BSD sources, but the user interface does not show any copyright information.
It is said that also the TCP/IP stack is based on BSD sources.
Can anyone affirm that Microsoft source code retains the mandatory copyright information ?
Another question. This headers define an interface between Hardware and Software. This interface was not created by Sorem Schmit. Can he claim copyright rights on them ?
How it started... (Score:5, Informative)
> I've read everything that I can find regarding support of the Highpoint
> controllers RAID functionality under Linux, and I understand what the issues
> have been. The one promising bit of information that I dug up in this process is
> that the 'pseudo' RAID functionality of the Highpoint and Promise IDE RAID
> controllers is now supported in FreeBSD (4.2-RELEASE and 5.0-CURRENT). My
> question is, can the new BSD code be leveraged to add support for these
> controllers to the Linux kernel, and could we reasonably expect to see such
> support in the near future?
>
> (I think that most all of the relevant/important bits are in ata-raid.c and/or
> ata-raid.h. In
> any event, the IDE/ATA guy over on the FreeBSD side is Soren Schmidt
> (sos@freebsd.org), and he
> wrote all of the stuff for this.
Re:The Pot Calling the kettle black (Score:3, Informative)
How else do you think StarOffice can even attempt to read Microsoft Office documents?
Because until a couple of years ago, MS documented the file formats [microsoft.com] on MSDN. They're no longer publically available, but MS will still give them to you if you provide a detailed description of what you want to use them for.
IANAL... but neither are you. (Score:2, Informative)
The only thing the BSD license doesn't allow -- literally, one of only three things disallowed by the license -- is to take BSD code and redistribute it without giving proper credit to the original author (by means of copyright statements). It's rather sad to see employees of such a prominent Open Source vendor failing to comply even with this simple requirement. Unfortunately, as repeatedly evidenced by discussions on Slashdot, most programmers never bother to read the licenses on the code they're using.
Slashdot is late ... (Score:1, Informative)
The copyrights are back. And have been since yesterday. But that is not correct since this code is not exactly like the original.
The comment should say something like "Structures derived from ataraid.h written by SS."
And of course the structures should be documented, member by member, even if SS did not do that originally!
Also one wonders who managed to allow both u_int32_t and u32 in the kernel code. One of those alternatives should be removed as soon as poosible. There is nothing as bad as non-consistency in sourcecode anywhere.
Definitely ugly code. Reminds me of work where I have to watch people writing code like that all day long
It's pronounced... (Score:4, Informative)
æ ø å
"æ" is like the "ea" in "dead"
"å" is close to the "o" in "holy",
but the "ø" is a bit tricky to pronounce. It's kinda like the "ou" in "mourn", but with more bass.
So Sørens name is pronounced:
S + mourn + honest + n
= Søren! On top of that there is an expression in Danish, which goes "av for Søren", which means "auch for Søren" and you say that when you hurt. And there's another one "Det var Sørens!" which means "I'll be damned!".
It's a common name.... and I need to get a life.
Re:Arguably, this is a flaw in the BSD license (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for the info!
I did a full text search for "Regensts of the University of California" in my winnt dir and subdirs, but found results only in .exe files. There's also no readme on my Windows partition root dir or on the install CD's root dir (there actually is one on the CD, but it doesn't contain the copyright notices). But I guess the file is somewhere, after all the license doesn't require the reproduction to be easy to find.
In fact, I have to admit that it didn't occur to me as of now that you could satisfy the license with something as simple as a readme file. So this requirement isn't as bad as I thought (but it also doesn't make much more sense).
Re:Hypothetical question (Score:3, Informative)
When he studies Bob's source?
No.
When he uses Bob's concepts?
No.
If he uses the same identifiers, or identifier structure as Bob did?
No.
If he simply cut&paste's a few lines from Bob's code.
No.
You forgot one bullet point:
If he violates Bob's copyright and license.
Yes. Assuming Bob's code is under the BSD license, then John can use it in any way he wishes, so long as he keeps the copyright untouched. But once he alters or removes the copyright line he is "stealing" Bob's work.
What gets me is why some folks finds it so onerous to give credit where credit is due.
patch-to-2.4.10 (Score:4, Informative)
check out patch-to-2.4.10 [redhat.com]
Try these few lines:
+++ linux2410/drivers/ide/hptraid.h Mon Sep 24 10:35:39 2001
@@ -1,4 +1,32 @@
-
+/*-
+ * Copyright (c) 2000,2001 Søren Schmidt
+ * All rights reserved.
...and also...
+++ linux2410/drivers/ide/pdcraid.c Mon Sep 24 10:37:13 2001
@@ -12,9 +12,7 @@
Authors: Arjan van de Ven
-
-
-
+ Based on work done by Søren Schmidt for FreeBSD
That's good enough for me, plus, the timestamp on the patch file is Sept 24.
Does anyone read patch files anymore?
TiFox
Andre's mail on lkml - "BSD-Linux FlameWar over .. (Score:3, Informative)
It is clear that BSD is going off the deep end.
Linux ATA Development has a Legal signed NDA for the proper development of
the complete and correct FastTrak(tm) open sources driver.
I will soon publish the complete header codes in a original header w/
a Linux ATA Development Copyright and Promise Technologies Copyright.
The driver will have a GPL statement be issued in the headers and source
files to prevent the usage in BSDish environments. I have not tolerance
for being labled a thief.
I will prove the point that Linux does not "STEAL IP", then watch BSD
"borrow" from Linux. Just like we will watch 48-BIT Addressing be
borrowed without credit. Just like we will watch the new Ultra133 drivers
be borrowed without credit. BSD has no legal documentation to develop
these changes or access to hardware. We will watch and prove where IP
comes from in the world of storage.
Ever noticed how Linux had Ultra100 support 10 minutes after the release
of public information on June 5, 2000 8:00am PDT?
For now the Linux Open Source drivers for SoftRAID need to go away.
Not to worry they will return in full swing.
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 11:32:52 -0800
From: ---deleted---
To: Andre Hedrick
Subject: RE: Research FastTrak66 Ultra ATA/66
Hi Andre,
Very interesting work, I can't guess how you did it. Here is our beta
driver for the Fasttrak. This is the one I told you about. It uses our Raid
engine (engine3.a). Sorry, but as I mentioned there is no possibility of us
releasing the source code for this. However you can get a good idea of how
the engine works by viewing our driver source. Please do not distribute
this driver or the engine binary to anyone. I've included some quick
documentation too, I remember there is one step missing but it is obvious.
begin 600 FT03.TGZ
<BIG SNIP>
end
Here is the proof that I could have done this long before the BSD folks
had a clue about soft raid engines wrt addon cards.
Regards,
Andre Hedrick
Andre responds... (Score:1, Informative)
He even got a e-mail from FastTrak which included the beta binary driver, back in November 1999.
Odd. (The relavent e-mail should be here [iu.edu] by tomorrow).