"Conservancy Helps Samsung Resolve GPL Compliance Matter Amicably"
"Conservancy's GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers is pleased to
announce its role in assisting Samsung in a recent public compliance
issue. The compliance issue was brought to Conservancy's attention when
source code of an exFAT filesystem driver for Linux was unintentionally
released via GitHub, and Conservancy later determined that similar code
appeared in binary form only (thus violating GPLv2ยง3) in a Samsung
Linux-based tablet. Samsung has made a source release available on their
Open Source Release Center website."
-- http://sfconservancy.org/news/2013/aug/16/exfat-samsung/
On 07/21/2013 08:24 PM, Andrei Frumusanu wrote:
Hello,
It has come to my attention that a recent internal leak of Samsung's
kernel-space exFat driver implementation has been making the rounds
around the web. Nothing we can do about that, what is out, is out.
However a certain user "rxrz" went a bit too far with his actions:
https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse
He basically has stripped the original code clean of all Samsung
proprietary license marks and threw GPL tags on it.
When confronted with the issue; he came with the most unbelievable
retort: https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5
This went as far as being posted on Phoronix as a legitimate driver:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?81642-Native-Linux-Kernel-Module-Is-Out-For-Microsoft-exFAT
Clearly this is a breach of the most severe matter. Samsung has been
made aware of it, but there has been no response on the matter yet. I
expect nothing less than a DCMA takedown of the repository.
"It's a leaked code of a proprietary exfat driver, written by Samsung,
Inc. It works, you can use it. What else do you want, a signed paper
from your parents on whether you can or can not use it? I'm a
programmer, not a lawyer. You got the code, now decide what to do with
it, it's up to you."
What is wrong with such persons? This is insane.
Andrei F.
