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Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:35 am
by Walter
FYI, there's a discussion elsewhere about the soft/firmware of DM42 -- please see here: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/showthrea ... e=threaded.
Things sound serious though IANAL. Personally, I wish SM all possible success on a solid legal base.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:15 pm
by H2X
Walter wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:35 am
FYI, there's a discussion elsewhere about the soft/firmware of DM42 -- please see here: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/showthrea ... e=threaded.
Things sound serious though IANAL. Personally, I wish SM all possible success on a solid legal base.
+1

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:33 pm
by Krauts In Space
Walter wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:35 am
FYI, there's a discussion elsewhere about the soft/firmware of DM42 -- please see here: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/showthrea ... e=threaded.
Things sound serious though IANAL. Personally, I wish SM all possible success on a solid legal base.
Oh dear ...
Same thing as with Linux, graphics drivers and kernel symbols.
Folks like Greg Kroah-Hartman demand that any exported symbol underly the same rules like internal code. Closed source drivers shall not run on open source OSs in general and Linux in special.
Any changes to Free42 must be released and given back to the community.
But here it is similar to any open source software on a closed source OS or closed source hardware. Noone demands MS to disclose their sources bec it allows open source SW to run.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:40 pm
by Thomas Okken
Krauts In Space wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:33 pm
But here it is similar to any open source software on a closed source OS or closed source hardware.
No, it's not. The Free42 shell is part of Free42; compiling the Free42 core as a library and then linking it to the shell doesn't change that.
See http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-10 ... l#pid93841 and the second quote in http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-10 ... l#pid93842.

SwissMicros must release all the code that is necessary to re-create their derived work of Free42, and the shell is very much part of that. Anything less is a blatant GPL violation.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:02 pm
by keithdalby
:( I hope this is all oversight and misunderstanding. I would be so disappointed to learn otherwise.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 5:57 pm
by Russel
Thomas Okken wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:40 pm
[...] SwissMicros must release all the code that is necessary to re-create their derived work of Free42, and the shell is very much part of that. Anything less is a blatant GPL violation.
This looks very clear to me. I don't see any oversight or misunderstanding. I wish I was aware of this before I ordered a DM42.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:16 pm
by Thomas_ER
Thomas Okken wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:40 pm
Krauts In Space wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:33 pm
But here it is similar to any open source software on a closed source OS or closed source hardware.
No, it's not. The Free42 shell is part of Free42; compiling the Free42 core as a library and then linking it to the shell doesn't change that.
See http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-10 ... l#pid93841 and the second quote in http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-10 ... l#pid93842.

SwissMicros must release all the code that is necessary to re-create their derived work of Free42, and the shell is very much part of that. Anything less is a blatant GPL violation.
I'm not firm with GPL details, therefore a question:
Could it be an option for Swissmicros to release the complete source code only to customers of the DM42?

Of course, I fully share your position, and support the request for release of the source code by Swissmicros.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:19 pm
by H2X
Thomas Okken wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:40 pm
SwissMicros must release all the code that is necessary to re-create their derived work of Free42, and the shell is very much part of that.
I am out of my legal depth here, but possible distinctions such as operating system - executable program on that os, and chess program - chess engine come to mind. Seems that this issue hinges on the exact extent to which the shell is a part of the derived work.

I am sure Thomas knows this full well, but is there any (legal) doubt in Swiss Micros' favour here, and are there details about the implementation of the shell that make any (again, legal) difference her?

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:00 pm
by ijabbott
Hypothetically, the firmware might contain some third-party components to which SM either do not have the source (if it was only supplied to them as a binary library) or for which they do have no distribution rights for the source. I'm thinking of things like FAT file system support libraries as a hypothetical example.

Re: Troubled waters

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:49 pm
by Thomas Okken
Thomas_ER wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:16 pm
Could it be an option for Swissmicros to release the complete source code only to customers of the DM42?
Of course. Per the GPL, they have to make the source code available to their customers. They are not required to give it to everyone on the planet. (But their customers are free to pass on that code to whomever they like.)

This is all basic GPL. Anyone who releases software based on GPL-licensed code should be familiar with those terms.