Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL | Hacker News Reader

Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

lists.gpl-violations.org

164 pointssynchronise197 comments

The github issue is amazing reading: https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5

Normally you expect the copyright issues to be going in the other direction at gpl-violations, but kudos to them for noticing the problem and dealing with it quickly.

> Basically, I did microsoft's job, they even owe me money for the time I've spent fixing the code to work on modern kernels and "throwing the GPL tag on it".

Wow.

Oh it gets better. I had to stop reading the thread on Phoronix out of fear that my brain would pop out of my head and leave for Portugal.

> People with emotional insecurities are trying to make up something depressing and horrible, point a finger and make lots of noise.

> For me it was just sad to see people complaining more often than being grateful or happy about something.

> I hope they will patent and release a license on negative thinking.[0]

Actually, the entire Phoronix thread is an amazing display of incompetence.

> Were do you assume "this source code is not under GPLv2"? Source of this please? This implementation (code) was on github, that says something to you? [1]

My mind is boggled so hard right now. This better be a conspiracy to discredit FOSS, otherwise I'm losing yet another piece of trust in human sanity.

[0] http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?81642-Native-Linux... [1] http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?81642-Native-Linux...

Wow, again. Also found:

> Now, putting it publicly on github qualifies as distribution, and therefore this code is also under the GPLv2 license implicitly. The act has already been done, and even if it does contain copyrighted bits by MS, the released version is now forever GPL.

so, yeah.. by this logic I can take my company's code, put it on GitHub under a GPL license and now everyone is free to use it under GPL. Doesn't matter that I don't have the right to license it..

I can sort of see is logic. If a company has a private stash of GPL code (say, Google is running a special fork of Linux), and it gets leaked, even though the leak was illegal the code might still be distributable under GPL.

But ... this code was never (afaik) legitimately GPL. Maybe Samsung had based it on GPL code (in which case, it's GPL), but we'd need some proof.

Here's a couple of related answers at the FSF GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributio...

Unfortunately, the question isn't really directly answered.

The most relevant passage seems to be, "If the [unwittingly distributed] version in question is unpublished and considered by a company to be its trade secret, then publishing it may be a violation of trade secret law, depending on other circumstances. The GPL does not change that."

So I think a court would rule that the original leak does not qualify as "distribution," and thus the company is not required to distribute the source and everyone distributing the leaked code is under copyright violation.

I was confused for a minute, then I remembered that you don't actually have to accept the GPL as a user, only as an intentional distributor. So while the base version is GPL, the private version isn't - by default it's a hybrid of GPL and proprietary code.

Actually, you have to accept the license as a user to be able to use it. However, you don't give up your right to keep any change for yourself if you don't distribute it in a different format (e.g. binary). Whatever you do in your house is your business. That's probably what you meant (in spirit so to speak), though law wise it is very different.

>Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.

Why do you say you have to accept it?

Because running software involves making copies of that software. This requires you to have permission from the copyright holder. The GPL provides you with that permission, without adding any further conditions if the copies are just for the purpose of running the software.

http://www.digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise20.html

It is now well-accepted that copyright protects computer programs and other digital information, whether they are in readable source code form or are an executable program that is intended to be understood only by a computer. Copies are made whenever the program is transferred from floppy disk to hard disk or is read into the computer’s memory for execution, and those copies will infringe the copyright of the computer program if they are not permitted by the copyright owner or by copyright law.

1. Even if that's the current legal theory it's bullshit, and I can run code without having copies in ram if I need to.

2. 'if they are permitted by copyright law' Fair Use is part of copyright law, has that specific defense been challenged when it comes to software execution and caches in RAM?

Regarding 1, I really don't believe you can run code without copies, or copies of a derivitave work, being made in the process.

That said, I can't read a book without reflections in my eyes...

I could run it directly out of a ramdisk, or maybe transfer it to an embedded processor that can run it directly off the flash chip without even a processor cache. There's a whole variety of ridiculous things I could do to avoid the ridiculous restriction.

In practice I would trust fair use and try to use such as a defense if sued.

> I could run it directly out of a ramdisk

Hard to do when you were shipped a DVD.

Because that's the legal side of this. You can compile and run GPL software on your computer without agreeing to the licensing terms, but you may not do it. It is very unlikely that someone will check your HDs for offending uses, and besides, any use of GPLed software assumes an implicit acceptance of its license, so if such a check is happening, you would have to be there to say: "I have it but I am not agreeing to the terms". That sounds a bit silly doesn't it?

That's how the rules have been made, and not complying could be assimilated to piracy.

Licenses grant freedoms to do things that you would not otherwise be allowed to do. Here, the GPL means that someone with copyright grants a freedom (the freedom to change and redistribute). But these freedoms can only be granted by people who are in a position to say who gets to exercise those rights.

That code might come with a GPL, but the license it grants is worthless, because the people who put it there have no connection to the copyright holders.

I think Wisty was responding to the part where the crazy man claimed the driver code was originally GPL internally before being changed.

What chalst probably meant is that the fact that the code was orginally GPL doesn't make any illegal obtention of the code legal. If you keep code you wrote on your computer with a GPL attached, and someone breaks in and find it, he won't have the right to use it afterwards thanks to GPL.

The GPL defines the rights offered to "clients" by the "vendor", and how these rights are granted. Illegal obtention of the code is not one of the granting processes defined by the GPL.

Therefore, putting the GPL on that code is meaningless, whether it were GPLed initially or not.

Isn't the GPL unilateral? If something is actually under the GPL, it shouldn't matter how it was obtained.

I don't think so, no. The GPL talks about a lot of transference of rights that take place during the act of distribution. If one does not have those rights to start with (the code was stolen, for instance) then it wouldn't apply.

Actually it matters.

Original code is GPL. I make modifications. These modifications are mine. Someone stealing my modifications is performing IP theft.

Now, GPL stipulates when I have to release my modifications. I only have to release my patches when GPLv2: I distribute software to clients/users. In GPLv3 it is when clients/users use my software (aka: webservices).

Complete and utter horseshit. What you're talking about in the last sentence is the Affero GPL.

The GPL states and has always stated: If you modify code that is licensed as GPL and want to share it, the modified version needs to be GPL as well ("share alike").

But: Nobody forces you to release anything. If you don't release software, you don't need to make a license for it. If you want, you can license it as "Adam Zochowski Super License 5000". Frame it and put it on your wall, nobody gives a damn.

The GPL only governs and can only govern what happens when you actually do release (GPLv3 uses the term "convey") software to other people.

Sidenote: This post again confirms Stallmans rule of thumb that anybody using the utterly corrupt term "Intellectual Property" is either a moron or trying to mislead you.

GP wording was perhaps a bit awkward, but I don't think he meant that modifications had to be released unilaterally: He just indicated the difference between gplv2 and v3 in the situations when the licenses force the release of the modifications (ie. when distributing the program in non source form).

I wonder why people are voting you down. The GP is definitely confusing GPL with AGPL.

That's a completely different issue from what I'm talking about. You're talking about modifications that aren't yet/ever released under the GPL. I'm asking what happens if it's already completely GPL, including modifications, and it gets leaked.

Nothing happens. The GPL is built on top of copyright. You cannot license code that you do not have copyright permission for under the GPL.

Wow, this conversation sure is going in circles.

>I think Wisty was responding to the part where the crazy man claimed the driver code was originally GPL internally before being changed.

As in, IF Samsung put version 1 under GPL, owning the copyright, on purpose, but they were keeping it hidden and someone snuck it out, would it be okay to use?

No, because the person who snuck it out didn't have copyright permission from the company. Employees at most corporations don't own the code they write.

If this were legal, then it would also be legal for an outsider to hack Samsung and release their code under the GPL.

For licensing purposes, employees at companies do not have GPL code they are working on distributed to them by the company; they are part of the company.

In the hypothetical, Samsung intentionally put it under GPL. It is truly and legitimately licensed GPL, they're just not giving it to the public at this moment.

I don't know how I can make it clearer.

Something doesn't truly become GPL until it is distributed, because the license is a contract between licensor and licensee. Only someone with copyright permission can distribute code. Samsung didn't grant copyright permission to its employees, nor did it distribute GPL code to its employees. (In the hypothetical.)

So if I write a piece of software, burn it onto a hundred disks, put the disks in a nicely labeled basket for people to take, go to lunch, and people grab some, at what point does the license kick in?

I find strange your statement that there is no license despite every file header (hypothetically) claiming a license, and this being authorized by the entire management chain.

In the example with you putting the disks in a basket, you've intentionally made them available for people that are not your employees to take, so you're distributing them. The license kicks in when one is taken. It's analogous to downloading software.

The point is that for a license to be binding it has to be offered willingly. If I sign a blank check and you steal it from me, filling out $1000 and your name, although you'll be able to cash it, you have no right to the money, and I can undo the action.

The reason internal code is special is because the employees are not considered individuals to whom the company has distributed the software. Instead they are a part of the company.

I identified some relevant questions in the GPL FAQ. I believe that the first one and third one are what you care about.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#StolenCopy

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePo...

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi...

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DistributeSubsidia...

I hope that helps. The FSF might respond if you write to them, it's worth a shot if you're still not convinced.

I just find it very strange that you can't apply a license-for-distribution without actually distributing. That means if I want to make sure a piece of software is GPL, and nobody can take that away in the future, I have to perform an action such as uploading to github or burning a single CD and giving it to a homeless person. And somehow giving away that first single copy is what makes the GPL kick in for all other copies in the world.

That's still not quite correct. A license is a contract. It requires two parties. Every time somebody gives GPL software to somebody else, the contract is entered into and the license is granted. Giving away the first copy only establishes a license between you and the first recipient. That recipient in turn grants a license to whoever he gives it to, if and when he chooses to do so. In particular, I cannot demand that the first recipient give me a copy of the source code unless I have been granted license to the software by him.

If you want to be really sure a piece of software is GPL, it would probably be alright to include a file in your source tree on your harddrive saying that whoever finds it is free to make a copy of the project for themselves and consider that you have distributed it to them. It's about the clear intent to distribute.

> Giving away the first copy only establishes a license between you and the first recipient. That recipient in turn grants a license to whoever he gives it to, if and when he chooses to do so.

That's a logical way of looking at it, but it disagrees with the GPL FAQ. Note especially "If the version has been released elsewhere, then the thief probably does have the right to make copies and redistribute them under the GPL".

Plus, you can have a unilateral contract that's open to anyone willing to accept the terms. You don't have to take any action per person to 'establish' it.

The thief "probably" has the right to make copies because the diff between what he stole and what is readily available elsewhere for free is nil, and he can go and grab a copy with almost zero effort. But if A gives a copy only to B (it has still been "released elsewhere"), B keeps his copy to himself, and the thief steals a copy from A, the thief does not have any rights simply because B has a copy. That would be absurd! The FSF lawyers use the word "probably" because they believe this is what the court would find if a thief distributed something like an unmodified version of Linux taken off of a stolen hard drive.

However I was wrong about contracts vs. licenses. Obviously I am not a lawyer.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20031214210634...

I would love to hear Stallman's take on this.

I believe he means that, once the copyright on the code runs out (in 120 or whatever ridiculous number of years the copyright monopoly was able to extend further), that version, which is illegal right now (and not legally under the GPL) will automatically become GPL'd.

This is an interesting take on copyright and licensing.

Isn't this is a general trend with Android/Cyanogenmod hackers? If you go on something like xda-developers then there's a sticky saying "please don't post GPL violations".

Early Cyanogen releases were fast and loose with redistribution of Google proprietary apps, which got the author in a spot of trouble IIRC. Right now the distribution of these ROMS is IMO pretty suspect - they include whole swathes of binary blobs that they really shouldn't be redistributing willy nilly. If you want the proprietary pieces that belong to the manufacturer of your phone, you should have to pull them off yourself. The ROM creators shouldn't be pulling these bits off of their phones and re-distributing them.

The fact that so many prebaked ROMs are distributed though megaupload-alikes is a bit of a giveaway as to the general philosophy of that community.

Cyanogenmod ROMs aren't distributed with Google's apps anymore. If you want Google's Play store and Gmail, one needs to download and install a separate archive (I just did that yesterday :))

Of course, the distribution of that archive is still suspect. The licensing of those apps is the only leverage Google has for controlling the companies that distribute Android, like Samsung. It is meant for the likes of Samsung and HTC, not Cyanogenmod, which is why I think Google lets it be for now.

On the other hand if you want to use bare-bones Android, the biggest pain one experiences is the lack of Google Play. I can live without Gmail, I can live without Google Maps, but unfortunately most apps are only on Google Play, which is awkward, given that as a publisher with Android it isn't a big effort to publish apps on your own website, in addition to Google Play.

Unfortunately, bare-bones Android may get barer and more awkward over time, if they migrate more services from the core OS into "Google Play Services". As an example, the new geofencing APIs that they announced at the last Google I/O (intended to replace the buggy core "proximity alerts") are part of "Google Play Services", not the core OS --- and therefore not available on devices which aren't part of the Play borg.

(To be fair, their announced reason for this is that it gives them a way to make these APIs available on devices that aren't getting regular manufacturer updates. That said, I'm sure it hasn't escaped their attention that it also adds a point of differentiation between Play-enabled devices and, say, the Kindle Fire...)

cite: http://developer.android.com/training/location/geofencing.ht... (Note that step one in using this API is verifying that Play Services is installed.)

> As an example, the new geofencing APIs that they announced at the last Google I/O (intended to replace the buggy core "proximity alerts") are part of "Google Play Services", not the core OS --- and therefore not available on devices which aren't part of the Play borg.

The location services framework in Android is deliberately tied to Google APIs for using address and location resolution, while gathering location sensor data is not. Wouldn't it make sense further evolutions of that API also only work with Google APIs?

Meh. Don't know how much this really sucks the usability out of things. On my Android, I confess I'm already so bought in to the Amazon ecosystem that I almost resent the room that Play and the likes are taking up. Is particularly obnoxious when the phone complains that I need to make room, and the only crap I can't move to an SD card is the Google stuff.

The real issue there is that Android partitions its internal storage into System and "Internal SD" space.

So your 8GB phone will only have 2GB that can hold apps. It's awful.

(Apparently this depends on the phone and OS version to a degree. It's true on GT-i9100s running Android 4.0 at least, and true on all 2.x OSes)

Nexus devices use one big data partition for everything, so you won't have that problem.

Downside is, no more offline backups or increasing the storage capacity by a quick swap of the card.

Awesome. Thanks for clarifying that! :)

I just find it sad that I could live with this restriction if I could remove the Google apps I do not plan on ever making use of.

You can, depending on a few factors. Applications like Titanium Backup should point you in the right direction. :)

There's f-droid [1], "app store" or rather an actual FOSS repository with Android apps. It doesn't have all the apps play store has, of course, but lot of interesting apps can be found there. (I'm currently addicted to Frozen Bubble)

[1]: https://f-droid.org/

The ROM scene has always been a grey (verging on black) area when it comes to IP, however the enthusiast scene for the original WinMo and Android has helped the market in general.

There has always been a bit of a gentleman's agreement with the manufacturers that if we went too far, we'd be slapped back, but thankfully this has only happened a couple of times.

Indeed, the manufacturers themselves have been known to leak ROMS to the scene on purpose for various reasons. Sony even works directly with the hackers themselves.

> The ROM scene has always been a grey (verging on black) area when it comes to IP

Speak for yourself.

There are two scenes: The binary modder scene, where people retro-fit vendor-created and provided firmware-images with their own modifications. Commonly referred to as "Photoshop ROMs". This scene is clearly grey at best.

However, there is another scene: The one based on AOSP source and derivates of it. This scene lives on Github and similar places where open source is shared and reused freely, as intended.

This is driven by serious developers and focus is on doing things cleanly, properly and reliably.

Most successful and widely deployed ROMs (like Cyanogenmod) are based on this scene, and there is nothing grey or remotely shady about it.

Cyanogenmod) are based on this scene, and there is nothing grey or remotely shady about it.

So when Cyanogenmod was distributing the play store apps illegally there was nothing shady going on? It isn't like they suddenly decided to do the right thing, it was a C&D from Google that got them to stop.

http://androidandme.com/2009/09/hacks/cyanogenmod-in-trouble...

Copyright and IP is such a mess that everything is "shady" for any entity if looked from the right (or wrong) angle or country.

I don't think that there has been actual harm and malicious intent in the redistribution of the apps, just the fact that few people can afford the legal counsel fee to understand a licence.

Distributing google apps was not shady from some carefully chosen "angle" or country, it was just plain shady.

That was four years ago. I think that's long enough to make a distinction between "they started out doing something they weren't supposed to" and "there's nothing shady about Cyanogenmod."

And yet people still point out that Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, and IBM worked with the Nazis and that Microsoft had been convicted of an illegal monopoly even though that all happened decades ago.

Yeah no, MSFT was fined €561M as recently as March this year on account of failing to comply with an agreement made in 2009 (to offer users a choice of web browser) following an antitrust case settlement to the tune of €860M in 2007 and a complaint from Opera Software about the missing choice screen.

Don't get me started on the bullshit that is the browser ballot. Their anti-trust case in the US was at least based on something relevant to the PC market, not just a money-grab by a government board trying to prove its relevance.

You do have a point, but I don't think that diminishes my point. 4 years is not a long amount of time to forget the negative actions of an organization.

Oh, I'm sorry. It appears I accidentally fed prose into a markov chain.

Pointing out the past and claiming that things are still that way are different things. Clearly, Volkswagen is no longer building vehicles for the Nazis. It is still an interesting historical fact.

A godwin already? Comparing IP violations to genocide or coercive monopolies just seem like complete hyperbole.

Can you please rephrase in a way that isn't flamebait?

Seriously? You're calling Godwin just because I mentioned the word Nazi? Please do the world a favor and stop using that term unless you understand what it means. No one was compared to Nazis, no reference to genocide was mentioned, and it certainly was not flamebait. The point was that the world doesn't forget the negative associations of an organization just because four years have passed. Hyperbole can be a very effective way to make a point.

Godwin does not mean what you seem to think it means.

Not sure if you're trolling, but hyperbole involving a comparison to Nazi's is surely a godwin. Go on, read up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

"Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card"."

Your point is obscured by making a hyperbolic claim that ignores the actual impact of the wrong action.

Yes. Comparison. That's the difference. I didn't say "Cyanogenmod is like Hitler". I said "IBM did work for Hitler 60 years ago, and people still remember that." If anything, I compared Cyanogenmod to IBM.

Using the word Nazi or Hitler does not equal a Godwin. The fact that this needs to be explained so damn often really just shows that we need a new law. Freehunter's Law says that any discussion that mentions the words Nazi or Hitler will invariably get someone to invoke Godwin's Law improperly and make a fool out of himself.

Again: Never made a comparison to Hitler. If you're speaking English as a second language, I'll forgive you.

The open source subset of Android is not practically usable though. There aren't many (any?) devices that work usefully without a lot of proprietary bits.

While true, you don't need to supply the actual copyrighted/licensed binaries across the internet.

You can just supply a shell-script to extract them from the device, and its assumed that interested parties wanting to build the code has the device themselves.

Feel free to call it a loophole, but I don't have a problem with that and definitely don't see it as something shady.

True but from what I understand the images they put out have all the bits baked in. You literally just flash the new firmware onto the device. That means they are distributing bits they don't have licence to distribute.

> The open source subset of Android is not practically usable though.

And that will certainly remain the case if everybody ships their little backyard shed "rom" with proprietary bits included. If there is no demand for replacements, replacements will not be made.

That's why I mentioned the original XDA WinMo crowd, which I was a part of going back to 2006. They fall into the Binary Modder camp. :)

>The fact that so many prebaked ROMs are distributed though megaupload-alikes is a bit of a giveaway as to the general philosophy of that community.

What? Hosting (relatively) large files, on services that can deliver those around the world at faster than dialup is now some how bad? So I suppose all those companies using CDNs are also horrible and despicable. I mean, how dare they use servers that are well connected!

Less fly-by-night-ish projects seem to have little trouble finding mirroring that 1) isn't shared by so much warez 2) doesn't make me visit a webpage and make me do a CAPTCHA, 3) doesn't blast me with shady as hell popups and advertising.

The majority of Android ROMs (at least from the likes of XDA) are hosted at one of a few places -- goo.im being (probably) the most prevalent. There is 1) little to no warez (I've never seen any), 2) no CAPTCHA and 3) no pop ups and only text ads on goo.im.

Another popular one Dev-host (http://d-h.st/) also features none of the cruft you complain about.

CyanogenMOD (http://get.cm/) is hosted through several large partners and has no captchas, ads or warez.

MIUI's community fileserver (http://files.miuiandroid.com/) also has none of this.

AdroTransfer (http://androtransfer.com/) also has none of this.

I'm glad to see that things have improved to some degree. I just breifly visited one of those though (androtransfer.com) and it does have the shit I am talking about... "Please wait while we prepare your download! 10 second(s) left"... how about "No." Proper mirroring does not give you this sort of cruft and hassle.

I'll admit, the situation is improved because nobody tried to sell me a penis pump when I visited the site. No wake me when the solution to every other minor problem is not "Sort through this 500+ page forum thread, and find the guy who posted a 'fix' without sourcecode that comes in the form of a several rar files from Mega, adding up to 2GB. Oh and by the way, he even included a bunch of pirated gameboy roms for you too!"

They're providing a rather expensive service (Bandwidth and server costs ain't cheap) for free. The wait times are simply rate-limiting in nicest possible way. Also, it's laughable that you think "Wait X seconds" isn't "proper" mirroring, I guess you never use SourceForge? Or are they also filled with warez and penis pumps?

>"Sort through this 500+ page forum thread, and find the guy who posted a 'fix' without sourcecode that comes in the form of a several rar files from Mega, adding up to 2GB. Oh and by the way, he even included a bunch of pirated gameboy roms for you too!"

You apparently don't give a shit about how things actually work (for the most part); you'd rather disparage them. How about you hop on over and see how many of the "minor" problems are actually fixed in the mainstream distros?

http://review.cyanogenmod.org/ http://gerrit.aokp.co/

> I guess you never use SourceForge? Or are they also filled with warez and penis pumps?

I thought it was widely understood these days that sourceforge is shit. What is this, 2002? Finding yourself on a sourceforge page is one of the highest quality indicators of "maybe I should make sure I'm trying to do this the right way" that there is, almost entirely since most active projects have run away from it. The piss-poor way it handles downloads is just scratching the surface of sourceforges issues. They do not provide quality hosting.

Picking a proper distro at random: http://www.sabayon.org/download

That is how you mirror a project. Not with shit that requires me to use a javascript enabled browser. I can wget or torrent any linux distro I can think of. Why is quality hosting unavailable to Android development? I'm guessing, but probably because they play fast and loose with legal shit. Or maybe it is because no companies or universities are interested in being associated with it... probably because they play fast and loose with legal shit...

I know all about their bugtracking systems. Their bug tracking is not my concern; the community is my concern.

Open source is awesome, yay! It's given Google, Samsung and android device manufactures a hugely successful platform that they would have otherwise had to build from the ground up. And how do they repay the community? Binary blobs. While staying true to the letter of the license they circumvent the spirit of it.

I don't condone GPL violations. I also don't care about distributing binary blobs. Without them there wouldn't be alternative android distros.

They are distributed in megaupload-alikes because that's the most convenient way to distribute big files with many requests.

That gives away nothing as to the general philosophy of that community.

GPL, and probably other licenses, were constructed to work with copyright law. Such cavalier dismissal (by rxrz) is disrespecting those who created the licenses, the legal system, and the open source community, at large. We live in the real world, not "The Matrix".

Sadly, this is a typical thing that goes on in the Android User development community. Lots of casual attitudes by hobbyists that modify the Linux Kernel and rattle off some sort of excuse for not posting their sources while distributing binary copies.

Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, thinking that because they changed a few lines of code, they can claim to own the license to the software now. I'd say that is probably much more prevalent since there's a general assumption by many that the license most Android based software uses, Apache 2.0 means "do whatever you want".

Even worse is the fact that many users in the community are also quick to defend them blindly because they know little of development and why following licenses matter (even after all the facts are laid out and explained).

The last point you raise is one of the reasons that I think the drive to bring as many "proverbial grandmothers" to Linux presents a very serious concern.

Imagine if Linux distros started getting treated like Android does? Android got those legions of "regular" users and participants that everybody seems to want and it is not a pretty scene because of it.

Great point. I've had more than one conversation with friends in the Android community where we try to understand exactly why the Android development community is as toxic as it is at times.

Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos. It ends with users totally disrespecting real developers--stirring up unnecessary drama and fanboyism. Then there's users that compiled Android (or worse, added a few apps into a ROM by opening it in 7zip) and are suddenly an Android development expert (and users that believe it by defending them and donating money).

I'm just glad that most other development communities on the web are much more civil (though I'm sure there's outliers). Even with Ubuntu's rise in popularity, it comes nowhere close to matching the appalling behavior I've witnessed with Android. I've seen people belittled by users for simply trying to post an honest bug report to a developer in their forum thread. Though with the way users spam up those threads with offtopic discussion, one is just as likely to have their bug report missed/ignored.

> Part of it definitely has to do with the end users getting too close to those doing the development and the result is chaos.

I don't understand what you mean. Shouldn't a close relationship between developers and users be a key goal in development?

I think the point is that the relationship isn't getting useful work done. In a ROM thread on XDA developers there are no good bug reports with reproductions, expected results, etc. It is a bunch of people saying "this doesn't work" and "no of course it should work for you because it works on my phone" and especially off-the-cuff performance evaluations ("much smoother, no stuttering or lag"). It is difficult to figure out who knows their shit and who is just bullshitting.

> Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, [...]

Hmmm...

https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-2... :

> And I don't need any permissions from anybody, I'm a big girl.

Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.

Among all aspects of that discussion, the author's gender is about the most uninteresting detail. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position."

Agreed. I didn't even take the time to find out what their gender was since it's not any related issue. "Guy" was just used in a generic sense[1].

[1] http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...

I apologise, I am not familiar enough with the usage of 'guy' to know it is generic in singular (I know it is in plural).

No worries :). I just think of it as another way of saying "dude".

Bad example because officially dude is also male. The female is dudine, dudette, or dudess.

But like like guy, dude because gender neutral in common speech.

Just to nitpick, guy and dude are not gender neutral, they just happened to be heavily used by the community in general, mostly because people assume users are men by default.

Speak for yourself. A lot of people use it as a real gender neutral.

For a different point of view see http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

There are two related but subtly different uses here. A word like 'he' is a default, which can lead to problematic implications. A word like 'guy', to some people, is a true neutral, implying gender no more than the word 'somebody'.

Even if we were talking about 'he', your link would be out of place. Calling out the use of a gendered default as bad is not in fact another point of view on whether it is the default.

I have never heard of a female being addressed as "guy". Phrases such as "hey guy", "what's up guy" and so on have always been directed to a male.

Sometimes I will use it in a conversation when referring to a third party unknown to the person I am talking to and the subject's gender has no bearing (like in my first comment).

For example, "Oh, I know a guy that knows X," "I know a guy that is a fan of X" or in a less positive manner "That guy just cut me off [on the freeway]!" (since you rarely see who it might be and their gender doesn't matter)

I could say "dude" as well, but sometimes dude might be too informal. I could reword it with a number of other pronouns, but it depends on context and whom one is talking to.

"Hey, guys!" in reference to a mixed group is perfectly acceptable. "That guy" in reference to someone you do not know the gender of is also perfectly acceptable. Directly referring to a known female as "guy" is less so.

In phrases like those the word "dude" is more common than "guy", and it is frequently directed at women.

> Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.

Nah, pretty sure the "I'm a big girl" is just fratboy posturing.

Otherwise I agree with the commenter next to me: Breathtaking inanity is the interesting aspect here, not gender.

> I'm a big girl

I believe the key part of this is the "I'm a big X" pattern (i.e. "I'm an adult"), not that the person is female.

It's only natural to act defensively when someone abruptly turns up and accuses you of removing some comments from code.

If you talk to people who aren't licensing and legal enthusiasts, most don't have an interest in those topics.

What's wrong with disrespecting those who created the licenses, and the legal system? Maybe if we were disrespecting them sufficiently early on we wouldn't be in a mess we are currently in and the open source community wouldn't need to have a special name because it would be just called developer community?

> We live in the real world, not "The Matrix". So why does it feel like it's the other way around? Why does it feel like we are living in a world pull over by our eyes by lawers that restricts sharing our creativity?

Property is an inherent human thing. Likewise, people want to be remunerated for their work. Hence copyright. If scarcity was non existent, then we wouldn't have that problem...

Actually, it would still be here: Van Gogh artwork is unique, and this can be expanded virtually to anything, including the shirt you are wearing, since you're the only one to wear it. You might see where this leads to. Scarcity can always be created artificially.

Anyway, you wouldn't want people to take your shirts away from you, and copyright holders may feel the same towards their work.

The second issue is fairness: if someone has to pay a certain amount to access copyrighted work, why others would not have to, under the same circumstances? Fairness is the motivating principle supporting the existence of the Law.

And then there's science. People are paid to work on things or do it because they want to do it. Once they do something valuable they publish it and everyone can build upon their work.

Openness gave us modern world. Copyright gave us Hollywood and Sony Music.

Property is inherent thing. Not only human. Monkeys also want to own things and they don't like thieves. But extending physical property qualities to creations of human mind is just something some rich people did to get richer.

> some rich people did to get richer

As I said, it all comes from scarcity. Things that are abundant are monetary worthless, and if everything is free, then people don't need to make money, ergo no copyright anymore (there's a slight simplification here actually, because copyrights also grant control, which is actively thought). That said, while the system is mostly used by the richest, poor people can profit from it as well, if they manage to produce valuable IP.

The problem that we really have here imho is that code is just logic written in an often clever way, like a math theorem. Do we want to have these things protected by copyrights or patents? Does it make sense? That's the real question behind the issue at hand I believe.

Copyright is creating artificial scarcity for copies and using price abnormally elevated by this scarcity to finance art makers (in theory) and scarcity creators (in practice).

Same way I could create scarcity on your oxygen supply and use artificially elevated oxygen price to finance myself and my efforts to create and uphold this scarcity and also finance cute puppies to mask what horrible thing I am actually doing.

Patenting and copyright clearly doesn't make any sense. It's just a tool for creating revenue stream by holding information and commercial freedom hostage. There are much less harmful ways to create revenue streams.

There are those of us who completely disagree with copyright law. How many years have been wasted on projects like Samba because of draconian copyright? Much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source.

Wasting man-years on reimplementing software is not a large enough problem to decide that authors no longer have any rights with their product.

Contrary to popular belief, copyright law doesn't exist to ascertain dominion from an author onto it's creation. It exists to regulate exchanges and distribution of such creation, giving a controlled and finite monopoly to the original author with a guarantee that said creation ends up in the public domain. GPL exists to bypass such monopoly and implement a form of public domain (copyleft) that is compatible with copyright law.

but it is a large enough problem.

Wasting man years is precisely the problem. Our collective knowledge is boundless, but time is finite. See the problem here? Why would we want to waste the effort of future generations with the problems of yesterday?

So that an individual can live more comfortably with exclusive privileges to something that benefits all of mankind? We shouldn't be working towards selfishness and arbitrary contractual law.

Deleted comment

Why are you talking about infringing on the GPL? OP infringed on a "proprietary exfat driver, written by Samsung", not on GPL licensed code.

I'm sorry, unfortunately I haven't read the TFA before commenting.

Agreed, there are much better reasons for doing so.

If you disagree with it, you are free not to copyright your own works.

That's like saying if you disagree with slavery, you're free not to own slaves.

Copyright places a restriction on what I can do with information I legally have in my possession. It is a restriction on my freedom of expression. You might argue that the restriction is worth it in order to encourage artists, but don't pretend it doesn't exist.

It's awfully convenient that this fundamental right you are positing allows you to use other's work without doing anything at all yourself.

Like so many unrealistic libertarian positions the grandparent demands the fruits of civilization while rejecting the very rules that made them possible.

There exists even to this day places where you can freely live in something very much like a state of nature, where life continues to be nasty, brutish, and short but you have maximal FREEDOM!

I didn't posit the right to freedom of expression. It's been around a long time. And I don't pirate anything, and do produce work that would qualify for copyright, so how is it convenient for me?

As for your second point: I should support bad laws because otherwise I must be supporting anarchy? Is that seriously your argument? Perhaps you should give it more thought...

The original post in this thread wasn't talking about supporting or not supporting bad laws, he was talking about ignoring them ("much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source"). Ignoring laws because you disagree with them is anarchy.

Also while applications of copyright impact freedom of expression (i.e. The Wind Done Gone, there are plenty that don't. There's nothing expressive about pirating software, and very little expressive in redistributing unmodified or barely modified proprietary software.

I didn't reply to the original post. I replied to your statement: "If you disagree with it, you are free not to copyright your own works."

Any restriction on sharing information is a restriction on freedom of expression. After all, stopping people from repeating other people's speech is precisely the kind of censorship freedom of speech laws are intended to fight. Censorship is almost never used to suppress the original statement, only its repetition...

First of all, it's completely ridiculous to compare copyright with slavery.

You were never going to express yourself in exactly that manner, so from a practical standpoint copyright isn't preventing you from doing anything at all. It's a good compromise; how else do we prevent publishers and software companies from grabbing up indie work and selling it without compensating the creator? I don't understand being totally against copyright.

The area where it's going wrong is that Disney and the labels have big interests in extending copyright to ridiculous lengths and strengthening it to the extent that it's an anchor dragging behind any startup that wants to compete in that industry. We should be able to share movies and books with our friends and families. In their perfect world, every viewer would pay a fee for every viewing.

> First of all, it's completely ridiculous to compare copyright with slavery.

An analogy is not an equivalence. Please learn the difference.

From a practical viewpoint, copyright constrains what I can do with information, and you even admit it's a compromise yourself! I don't accept it's a good compromise. I'd prefer to do without than accept it. I acknowledge that most people (such as yourself) feel differently.

> An analogy is not an equivalence. Please learn the difference.

It's an appeal to emotion by comparing it with something so different it barely makes sense, if you prefer to argue from emotion instead of reason, then by all means. Preventing you from emailing a .pdf or .mp3 is nothing like taking away all your basic human rights, treating you like you are subhuman, and forcing you to labor in the fields.

What rights should an author have with their work, then? When have you wanted to, but were unable to, share information that wasn't just "I want it for free"?

EDIT: Reflecting on it, this sounds confrontational, but I genuinely wish to know how copyright is impacting you. I hate all the patent trolls, I hate the patent system, I hate copyright trolls, so maybe I hate the copyright system as well, and just don't know yet.

The title makes it sound as though this has been accepted into the Linux kernel when in fact it has not been. It is designed to work with the Linux kernel but it is in no way associated with Linux. FUD much?

Is it possible that it was an accidental mistake, rather a deliberate attempt to spread 'Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt'?

Be Civil. See http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Part of the potency of FUD is that it's so easily believed and you'll seldom ever hear FUD from someone who doesn't personnel believe it. It shouldn't be a personal insult for someone to call out potential FUD when they see it.

I've updated the title to hopefully dispel any unintended interpretations.

Did Samsung, in fact, distribute the code in Android devices? If the answer is "yes", wouldn't that make it GPLd?

Not necessarily, no. There is a long history of people releasing closed source drivers, particularly on embedded platforms.

So far as I can tell the kernel devs think it's harmful and A Bad Thing (TM), but not a violation.

Also as has been pointed out below, it wouldn't automatically make it GPL. It would make it in violation of GPL and releasing under GPL would fix the violation, but it wouldn't make it GPL.

There's a 10-year-old post to LKML from Linus saying the GPL nature of kernel modules is a huge grey area. I don't think it's been resolved since then.

Correct. Link:

http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0312.0/0670.h...

> If the answer is "yes", wouldn't that make it GPLd?

No.

As the others have said, no it would not make it GPL.

However, the customers who bought such devices could try sue for feeling mislead as a customer. If Samsung ever used the word free, open, or even linux, they might be liable under false advertising consumer protection laws. Keyword here is might, and is likely to vary based on where you live.

If enough people did this, samsung would likely feeling pressured to relicense the necessary (sold) kernel modules as GPL.

Licenses aren't applied automatically. What can happen is for Samsung to get sued for a violation of GPL and either be forced to license the code under GPL or pay damages.

There's a severe fault in rxrz's logic here, if I'm following this correctly:

"This code was originally under a Samsung proprietary license" Wrong.

exfat_version.h:/* - 2012.04.02 : P1 : Change Module License to Samsung Proprietary /

this is version p2. I could've technically stripped those comments and changed the version number to / - 2012.02.10 : Release Version 1.1.0 */ But I didn't. Originally, it was either public domain or GPL.

Nobody would've ever found out by the code alone, which version this actually is."

Let me pull out the key statement here:

"Originally, it was either public domain or GPL."

That's an assumption. Samsung placed a license on it, and rxrz assumes that prior to that, it must have been GPL or public domain. However, the driver was unknown and didn't exist prior to rxrz's release. It seems likely something could be classified as public domain when it was kept under lock and key.

My guess is, this was given a license when the code was finished and bundled for distribution. Assuming otherwise seems dangerous, in my opinion.

Samsung may not have intended it as such, but aren't all derivatives of GPL-licenced code also GPL by definition?

No. The authors of GPL-licensed code has no say in how other people license their code they don't own the copyright on.

Derivatives of GPL-licensed code is either: 1. GPL-licensed 2. Illegal

If it's not explicitly 1 by the license on the derived work, it becomes 2. It is not automatically "forced" into category 1.

By illegal you mean illegal to distribute. If Samsung used this code internally and it was leaked accidentally, they are not in violation of the GPL.

If Samsung ships binaries produced from this code to customers and this code is derivative from GPL code, they _are_ in violation of the GPL.

Yes, of course.

This is not such a gray area as you think. Search for the readline license and what that meant to clisp.

Hint: derivative work of a GPL code is GPL (although that was slightly different for clisp).

You are free not have GPL stamp on your code as long as you keep it to yourself. If you distribute it to a third party you are automatically bound by GPL.

There is no gray area. Derivative works are GPL or illegal. But nothing physically forces people from breaking the law. You cannot GPL a piece of code against the author's will.

Nitpick: against the copyright holder's will. They're often not the same as the author (e.g., work for hire).

The questions are - is it a derivative of GPL code, and if so have they distributed binaries?

I don't think drivers necessarily have to be derivative of GPL code (look at, for instance, nVidia's closed source drivers and lots of Android/ARM graphics drivers).

Those are technically GPL violations, but kernel devs haven't (yet) complained much.

That is absolutely not the community consensus. Linus and the kernel community as a whole have taken the position that this is specifically allowed by the GPL as using a public interface isn't creating a derivative work.

Not unless something's changed recently: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0312.0/0670.h...

Linus Torvalds disagrees with that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Loadable_kernel_m...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable_kernel_module#License...

If you use Wikipedia as source, please verify that the section you are referring has a source. Both now has citation needed tags on them.

It does not seem that there is a community consensus position.

I've been able to find a statement from 2008 in which many kernel devs publicly said they think that closed drivers are harmful. But violations?

I'm not convinced. Got a link that might convince me?

Depend which you want to listen to. If you want to listen to what lawyers think (fsf), then there is a GPL violation( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NonfreeDriverKerne...).

If you want to listen to kernel hackers, (such as Linus Torvalds), then he doesn't say if it is, or isn't a violation. Rather, he says that developers has a right to write non-free drivers to the kernel using modules (http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules....).

So... what does that mean? Im not a lawyer, but it looks to me as an GPL violation which has been given permission to exist by one of the kernel developers. That it is the project leader that gives permission does lower the risk that any individual kernel developer will suddenly go out and start suing companies for GPL violations, even if they has a legal right to do so under copyright.

Interesting.

The non-litigious nature of the kernel devs seems to keep this from kicking off. It would probably end up hysterically expensive for all concerned and be a bit of a PR failure I guess.

That FSF page also claims that Perl programs that use GPL'd Perl modules are required to be licensed under the GPL, and assorted other absurdities (hint: if there is no copying or modification of something copyrighted, there can be no copyright violation).

Contrary to the FSF's apparent belief, dependency has nothing to do with derivation.

Since FSF for years has had (and still have) lawyers advising them that this is indeed the case, what is your authority to claim otherwise?

Or, in other words, citation needed.

Firstly and most obviously, the FSF is clearly the only group that believes this garbage. Stop a minute and think about the consequences if coding to an interface made your program a derivative of whatever (first) implemented that interface... have these actually happened? does anyone even act as if they take the possibility seriously (outside the FSF's FUD)?

Remember the story of how IBM-compatible PCs came to be, with the clean-room reimplementation of the BIOS? That would be a copyright violation, except it clearly wasn't (or the clones would have been shut down). WINE and ReactOS would be copyright violations, and especially so given wanting to implement undocumented/non-public interfaces. Samba would be a copyright violation.

Any Win32 program that Microsoft didn't like, could be shut down as a copyright violation. So the browser wars would have been conducted rather differently. WordPerfect could have been blocked or forced to pay for licenses, instead of hindered by sneaky means.

IIRC the FSF claims support based on one case, where someone made singing children's toys and someone else made replacement ROMs (or maybe it was the whole electronic module?) to make them sing differently; the replacement parts were found to be a copyright violation because the performance that the toy put on, was found to be a derivative of the original performance. Which is still ridiculous (and IIRC other districts have found differently in a few similar cases involving video games), but even so does not support the FSF's extreme interpretation.

> [...] FSF is clearly the only group that believes this [...]

So, it should be no trouble for you to provide a citation from an legal authority which states otherwise?

RMS reckons so: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/linux-gnu-freedom.html

"Originally, it was either public domain or GPL."

He's claiming that this is actually GPL code that Samsung claimed as proprietary (which they can't do). Is he wrong?

It's hard to tell - there doesn't seem to be any proof of this and in the case of leaked code I'd be wanting proof.

I think judge should force Samsung to release all the information they have on history of this code. After all Samsung is suspected of violating the license. Shouldn't they be able to prove copyright before they can claim it?

The only reference I've seen to suspected license violations is the assertion in the git history that it was at one time under GPL or maybe public domain. There's no provenance here.

I doubt this will ever get before a judge, more likely a combination of DMCA takedowns and exclusion from the mainline kernel.

This is a quite interesting case from a legal standpoint. IANAL but my 5 cents are:

* If it's true that Samsung distributed this driver as part of the Linux kernel source code tree then it is arguably a derivative work of the Linux kernel.

* If so then these two sections of the GPL seem relevant:

> 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

> 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

* I'm not absolutely sure what that means for rxrz. Section 6 seems to imply that rxrz may have a license to the driver, and that that license is indeed the GPL. On the other hand section 4 seems to imply that the redistribution to rxrz was "void". Does that mean rxrz does not have the rights under section 6?

If I where rxrz I would at least toy with this idea: a) wait for the DMCA take down notice, b) challenge it claiming to have a license under section 6 of the GPL and c) hope that Samsung does not have the nerve to go to court and risk a decision that would clarify that their license to the Linux kernel has been irreversibly revoked. :)

But where does that leave us concerning legality? Is it clear that what rxrz has done is illegal?

>> If it's true that Samsung distributed this driver as part of the Linux kernel source code tree then it is arguably a derivative work of the Linux kernel.

Did Samsung really distribute the source if it was published by accident by one employee?

Even if they did, it's under a proprietary license and it's not clear that proprietary kernel modules are necessarily derivative works, they are commonplace.

Even if they are derivative that may make Samsung in violation of the GPL but not actually make their code covered (these are be separate issues).

And even if they are in violation, this usually has to be challenged by a copyright holder, not simply by a recipient of the binaries. And that's if rxrv even received any binaries...

Section 6 is interesting there - "Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions."

I could see a lawyer arguing that the "Program" in clause 1 and 2 are the same, but if you distribute a work based on the Program the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program itself but not the work based on the Program, as that is not enumerated in clause 2.

And this is before we even get into the patent violations that any use of such code involves.

> Even if they did, it's under a proprietary license and it's not clear that proprietary kernel modules are necessarily derivative works, they are commonplace.

True, proprietary kernel modules are commonplace, and not necessarily derivative works. But you very rarely see proprietary drivers "in-tree" (that is where the source code file is placed into the Linux kernel source code tree and built as part of the kernel build process). I remember reading an argument by Torvalds that any driver built in that way is a derivative work of the kernel (even if it is built into a module) but unfortunately I can't find it now.

> Even if they are derivative that may make Samsung in violation of the GPL but not actually make their code covered (these are be separate issues).

Mmm... I'm not entirely sure... Normally I'm a "separate issues" kind of guy, but here I'm hesitating...

To make this interesting let's say Samsung has distributed to rxrz in binary form and that the driver is a derivative work. Then the driver is part of the Program distributed to rxrz under the GPL and Samsung has granted rxrz this right (as per section 1 of the GPLv2):

"You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program."

Isn't that exactly what rxrz has done? :) Why would rxrz not be allowed to argue that in court? I agree that normally the issues are separate, but in my mind the GPL ties them together in this case. I'm not saying that rxrz is right, but it's not entirely clear-cut to me.

> If it's true that Samsung distributed this driver as part of the Linux kernel source code tree then it is arguably a derivative work of the Linux kernel.

Other companies use binary blobs in the Linux Kernel by using a GPL-compatible shim driver.

Samsung would be in violation of the GPL if they do not publish the source to the SHIM in a compatible license, but that would imply nothing about the binary blob.

Disclaimer: I'm not even sure whether they use the shim workaround in this case.

Usually that thin layer of source code is under a proprietary license as well. The main reason to have it is actually not legal but technical: distributing kernel modules in binary form (.ko) separately from the kernel itself is a pain in the arse (bordering on impossible) since they depend on the exact version of the kernel and in some cases even the build config (e.g. skbuff size may depend on #ifdefs).

you know, it'd be interesting to see what the open source community could produce if we all took his approach to licences for a little while.

A mess of lawsuits, withdrawn devices and shut down code repos most likely.

And no users.

Everywhere I've worked since the mid 90s, internal and external license compliancy enforcer-types have always left me and my stuff alone when I print out the DFSG and a couple of the DFSG compliant licenses, show them we run Debian, and at work only use Main not Non-Free. I've never had a "license compliancy audit" run longer than 30 minutes or so and maybe two dozen pieces of paper. Usually much less.

Its a measurable financial advantage of free software. You should see the labor and expense nightmare my proprietary coworkers have gone thru to "prove" they have the right to a copy of windows and office and other stuff. Its very expensive to use proprietary software legally at a business, and I'm not just talking about purchase price!

If I could no longer use free software because there no longer is any, I'd have to switch to something involving less legal risk. Unfortunately probably MS products, apple being a bit too rich for their blood. It would be a nightmare conversion, and a much higher TCO leading to longer term financial issues.

i didn't necessarily mean for practical use, i just meant, what sort of finished (hah) product could come out at the end!

We might have better interop with proprietary software. Maybe. It's possible that the BSDs would have more hardware support as they could just borrow it from Linux.

Companies would probably keep an even tighter guard on their code. They may stop contributing to FOSS completely without the protection of the GPL.

We'd probably find all sorts of weird binaries being thrown around the place, as seems to happen in the android scene, where people just splice stuff together without considering any of this stuff. Support and consistency would be a nightmare. People would be less able to build on each others work as there would be no necessity for anyone to publish anything if they didn't want to or couldn't be bothered.

I don't think it would be any sort of utopia.

Lawsuits aside... I guess a bunch of illegal-but-everyone-uses-them binary blobs of highly varying quality with some sources floating around.

Oh, we had that, that was called "pirated [Stallman forgive me] Windows". I believe I had leaked W2K sources burned on some old CD, if they're still readable...

If it's a derivative work of the Linux kernel (links to internal kernel API) it should be GPL. If Samsung distribute it to users then it should do that under GPL.

Samsung should be the first to relicense it.

Morally you might be right. Legally it's a grey area, and practically it's almost certainly a no-go.

So basically company can take your gpld code, extend it, slap their license on the whole thing it and redistiribute binaries without the source code and nobody can slap the gpl back on where it should be because it's a gray area?

You can't, in general, do that.

The kernel developers and the FSF have always claimed that loadable modules (like the exFat driver) are "derived works", which has a specific meaning in copyright law. In particular, the GPL very clearly says that derived works must be re-licensed under GPL.

The vendors claim that "derived works" doesn't include linked code, or plug-in patterns. They say that they aren't really releasing their own kernel, just releasing the stock kernel with a bunch of proprietary applications on top, along with their proprietary kernel module.

Like that guy said, it's a gray area.

> The kernel developers and the FSF have always claimed that loadable modules (like the exFat driver) are "derived works"...

Not true [1].

1. See e.g. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.....

Ah, sorry. I should not have been so blanket.

This is not about the GPL'd code people take from you, it's about what they add/change to this code.

Whether you can directly slap the GPL back on these modifications is very discutable. You can most certainly sue them for breaching the license, though.

(and, like sister comment says, this is not what's happening here anyway)

Nope, and that's as far as we can tell not what happened here.

When the code is out there, is it possible that a third-party will modify the existing exFAT projects based on this "leak", and get them to work properly and out of userspace?

It would be very bad if they do, since that would open the existing exFAT projects up to legal action.

Anyone who has read the Samsung code is "tainted" with the knowledge of Samsung's proprietary techniques which may be copyrighted, so those people may well introduce copyright violations into the code.

In clean-room reverse engineering projects, the people who are examining the system to be reverse engineered are never the same people that actually write the new clean code, thus avoiding the taint of proprietary knowledge.

Not just copyrighted. Microsoft claims a whole bunch of patents related to exFAT. This means you can't legally implement exFAT without a license to those patents, even if you've never even seen the Samsung code. This is the reason why exfat-fuse is not part of any large Linux distributions.

It's also most likely one of the reasons exfat even exists: so Microsoft can exercise some control and have licensing income from a filesystem format being in common use, which they don't have/lost with FAT.

The need for procedures like that is ridiculous. Why should you have to expensively prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that your code doesn't infringe?

I'm highly curious about this from a strategic long term point, not a tactical individual issue. Who is rxrz? Before June 24th, he/she/it (it aka an alias) didn't exist on github.

If this is someones paid project (who's paying?) to disrupt exFAT work, its doing pretty well, only took about a month to possibly destroy the whole area of operation. Effective. Probably pretty cheap.

So, follow the money. Who benefits? Could they (or a subcontractor of a subcontractor, etc) be hiring someone to sabotage a project?

There's a critical matter of identity here. We're discussing this as if its a J random hacker individual scenario. It might not be, and there's no reason to suggest it goes either way. Also looking at the github record this individual has apparently never done anything else, and didn't "exist" until recently, which is ... odd.

This situation needs to be looked into. I would give it maybe 75% chance of pure cluelessness and flaming, and maybe 25% chance of being something... more complicated; or worse.

latest commit says "Change Module License to Samsung Proprietary"

https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/commit/dbf695748ab5e90a...

Why not just use this?

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/01/23/2142213/open-source...

Apparently the Fuse-based driver hasn't got very good performance and is not quite production quality yet (according to the Phoronix article).

In addition, the person who put the leaked driver on GitHub seems to have a negative opinion on Fuse (in some of the forum threads where he's ranting), which does not seem to be based on facts.

the ways of the tin foil is strong with the repo's maintainer.

Do you really think its worth saying this considering how much of the tinfoil conspiracy shit has become reality.....

I agree with the actions of the repo maintainer.

Why should we play along with unjust copyright laws? GPL sheep are just part of the problem, creating their own nest of licensing woes everytime you touch their code.

Even if you don't want to play along with copyright laws - and I can perfectly understand why one wouldn't - that's not a reason to deceive people by claiming the code to be GPL licensed and make them liable if they redistribute it.

If one wants to say "fuck copyright", putting a copyright license in the code is not the really the most appropriate way.

I think deception is a valid tool for creating chaos and chaos is a valid tool for bringing down systems.

Obviously a troll account since it was created for the specific purpose of posting that comment (created 1 hour ago, posted 1 hour ago)...

Deleted comment

Credit should be put where credit is due

Reply on news.ycombinator.com