I wrote to Richard Stallman about the whole situation months ago and I'd be more than willing to do it again.
But to what end? Chad is probably not receptive to anything RMS would say. When Chad made his single unapologetic post to this mailing list, he asked people to email him if they had concerns. http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/2013-February/003683.html This offer for correspondence either never happened or he didn't care. He'll keep posting files without source and he'll keep saying the source exists if you either look harder or become his BFF, both processes entail giving up rights under the GPL. As for me, I'm stuck. I keep downloading these binaries yet asking for source is pointless. I'm either refused outright because of my intentions to enforce GPL or told that every patch can be found online. Judging by the changelogs, this should be true, but there is no means to audit the code. There's absolutely no offer to share any code authored by Chad himself. It's all part of Chad's need to be a "teacher" or source of knowledge. Share carefully selected pieces of pseudocode and private git server screenshots to wow his followers and nothing else. Just enough to give the illusion that he shares anything. Yet I've seen zero evidence of anyone who has actually received source or found a valid offer for source anywhere in the binaries within the past year. The phrases I keep hearing is "he's shared source before" and "I wish Chad developed for this device". Is it really lost on his followers that if the source was public then any device could run a kernel with Anthrax code. More importantly, Chad would get credit and have his proof-of-work formalized in git trees that would never be taken down as he would do. Or it would expose Chad as a total fraud who made dangerous code commits and/or placed NDA/proprietary bits (BeatsAudio, 3D, exfat, etc) in his ROMS and kernels. As for whether I have an axe to grind. I don't. I'm just a very bored person who believes in justice and the principals of free and open-source software. There is no distance between us on the latter. If it wasn't me, it would be someone else. And there are other people, they're just quieter about how they execute GPL takedowns. Finally, Sonwon, if you are going to accuse me of wrongdoing or continue to insinuate a misguided view of how open-source or Cyanogenmod maintainerships work, you best be ready to provide examples of such. This list will not accept false equivalences or any sort of "same thing, both sides". - Eric From: SonWon [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:12 AM To: Eric Appleman Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Yet another GPL violation from the Anthrax crew (Android > kernels) Eric, It sounds like you have a personal axe to grind. No offense meant, just my perception. There have been wrongs committed on both sides. Yes, I would like to see Anthrax published for all to share, giving proper credit to the author. Yes, I would like others to stop stealing and claiming ideas that were not theirs. This continued grinding of the axe will not lead to a better community. Why don't you try what Nuno wrote, "Eric, what about writing an email to Mr. Stallman about this situation? I don't mean an email calling for arms and legal action, but rather a request to place this developer and Mr. Stallman in contact. Who knows? Perhaps a friendly resolution can be found from this interaction. Would be a win-win situation." Let go of the hate this isn't doing the community any good. And perhaps we can have a win-win situation. On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Eric Appleman <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: <snip> Now SonWon, explain to me how this situation can be improved at all unless Anthrax pulls a 180 and act like everyone else who uses GPL software (Chinese OEMs notwithstanding)? - Eric <snip>
