plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Hans Reiser]

Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions 
from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.

You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including 
clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long 
time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL out 
the door.

By the way, does Debian support as a matter of principle the decrediting 
of Stallman and KDE by RedHat?  I had really expected this from RedHat, 
not Debian, when I wrote those clauses.

In the academic world, this is called plagiarism.  In the academic 
world, knowledge is shared but fairly credited.  The GPL is born of the 
academic tradition.

--
Hans

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ben Collins]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:07:03PM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions 
> from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.
> 
> You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including 
> clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long 
> time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL out 
> the door.
> 
> By the way, does Debian support as a matter of principle the decrediting 
> of Stallman and KDE by RedHat?  I had really expected this from RedHat, 
> not Debian, when I wrote those clauses.
> 
> In the academic world, this is called plagiarism.  In the academic 
> world, knowledge is shared but fairly credited.  The GPL is born of the 
> academic tradition.

I'd hardly call it plagiarism. Your copyright is, by will of our own
policy and to abide by authors wishes, distributed with the tools in
/usr/share/doc//copyright.

Now, I've never heard of such a copyright clause in your tools and I am
quite sure that the individual maintainer of the package did not
intentionally go against such clauses. Not to mention that the acts of
that single maintainer of the software you wrote is not the will of the
entire Debian project.

Now I hope you stop with your trolling and consider speaking
respectfully to us. I am pretty sure that if you emailed the maintainer
of the package and pointed out the facts to him, he would revert the
change.



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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn McGrath]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 20:07:03 +0400
Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including 
> clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long 
> time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL
> out the door.

Please provide a link that supports your assertian about a GPL v3.

"The BSD License Problem""obnoxious BSD advertising clause"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html



Glen

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Marcel Weber]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
Hi
First I have to say, that I even did not realize, that the credits had 
been removed.

I think Hans has a good point. The inclusion of credits is something 
that should be respected. Free software does not mean that you can do 
what you want with a piece of code, but that you're allowed to use, 
modify and redistribute it freely, respecting it's license.

Even a credit that goes into the direction of a commercial has to be 
respected, if the license forbids it's removal. The same way we (the 
debian population) insist on the proper use of the most common GPL V2, 
so other licences have to be respected as well. How would we complain 
if a company like Microsoft would include GPL based software in their 
products without mentioning and crediting it. And anyone who fears that 
free software could become commercial sponsored software must exclude 
this kind of software from the distribution instead of violating 
licences.

Hans, I hope that the removal of these credits was a mistake and that 
they're going to be included in future releases of testing. ReiserFS is 
a really fine piece of software and anyone who helped with it's 
development should have the right to be credited if he or she wants so.

Perhaps someone should file a bug against this.
Regards
Marcel
Am Samstag, 19.04.03, um 18:07 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Hans Reiser:
Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions 
from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.

You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including 
clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long 
time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL 
out the door.

By the way, does Debian support as a matter of principle the 
decrediting of Stallman and KDE by RedHat?  I had really expected this 
from RedHat, not Debian, when I wrote those clauses.

In the academic world, this is called plagiarism.  In the academic 
world, knowledge is shared but fairly credited.  The GPL is born of 
the academic tradition.

--
Hans

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with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact 
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Florian Weimer]

Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including
> clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long
> time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL
> out the door.

Oh, I think it's natural to assume that these clauses are superfluous
because the GPL explicitly states that a distributor "may not impose
any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
granted herein".  If these clauses were of any legal relevance, your
software wouldn't be redistributable at all.

Just don't use the GPL for your software if you don't like it, but
don't complain if anyone misunderstands your homemade license
mishmash.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Thomas Viehmann]

Marcel Weber wrote:
> I think Hans has a good point. The inclusion of credits is something
> that should be respected. Free software does not mean that you can do
> what you want with a piece of code, but that you're allowed to use,
> modify and redistribute it freely, respecting it's license.
IMHO
a) It is unfortunate that copyright in the doc dir doesn't list the full
   copyright (at least in my version) that is in README, but only mentiones
   GPL. Also, I think that the credits should be put somewhere in the doc
   directory.
b) The licensing information certainly ist misleading: The first line says
   GPL 2, period. Then there's lengthy information for assigning copyright
   of patches. After that, there is that funny "nothing ... shall be interpreted
   to allow you to fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my credits ...",
   which I'd probably interpret as "you cannot distribute without something
   that says...".
c) Someone running fsck because he has trouble with his hard drive probably
   doesn't want to see the history of mankind from the beginning to the
   creation of reiser v3. The patches to the source seem to be making
   reiserfsck behave more like other fsck (e.g. adding -y), so I can understand
   why someone would remove them. (In fact, if I have a (insert your favorite
   language items here) broken reiserfs I probably don't want to know who
   sponsored the breakage and lose ** lines of scrollback messages for that.)
   So it's only reasonable to move the stuff. No other author of any piece of
   GPL'd software I know of has such obnoxious sponsorship messages. In fact,
   they are hindering usability of the tools.
d) At least the noninclusion of README is probably an honest mistake and a
   friendly email would 100% suffice.

Cheers

T.


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Jarno Elonen]

> I'd hardly call it plagiarism. Your copyright is, by will of our own
> policy and to abide by authors wishes, distributed with the tools in
> /usr/share/doc//copyright.

Ah.. I guess Hans is referring to the author list in README?
The package maintainer probably looked at COPYING (contains GPL, as usual) and 
AUTHORS (an empty file) and didn't realize that README was actually an 
important addendum to the license and omitted the file from the package by 
mistake.

To prevent such problems in the future, perhaps the ReiserFS project could 
move the deviations from GPL from README to the beginning of COPYING and move 
the author list to AUTHORS?

Additionally, it might be a good idea to provide a shoreter list of authors in 
addition to the detailed one for easier copying to 'standard copyright files' 
like 'copying' in Debian.

- Jarno

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Travis Crump]

Marcel Weber wrote:
Hans, I hope that the removal of these credits was a mistake and that 
they're going to be included in future releases of testing. ReiserFS is 
a really fine piece of software and anyone who helped with it's 
development should have the right to be credited if he or she wants so.

Perhaps someone should file a bug against this.
Regards
Marcel

You mean a bug report like 
?  Oh, wait... 
 What if someone wanted to write a gtk frontend to mkreiserfs?  The 
credit would be similarly removed from the user's sight.  It would 
probably me right to put the message in the about window of this 
hypothetical program, but it wouldn't have the same visiblity as the 
credit now has since users rarely look at the about window.  Ultimately, 
all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
the program is DFSG-free.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Ryan]

> Now I hope you stop with your trolling and consider speaking
> respectfully to us. I am pretty sure that if you emailed the maintainer
> of the package and pointed out the facts to him, he would revert the
> change.

Dude,

You really need to calm down. Twice now recently you have opened your
mouth and stuck your foot in when there really wasn't any need to. Take a
Valium and do something less stressful.


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ben Collins]

> all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
> cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
> the program is DFSG-free.

Amen. Making part of the code immutable is not what I call free
software. What if I want to use parts of the code and I respect the
copyright and license...does that mean I also have to take this part of
the code and output the credits? What if environment doesn't provide a
way to output the credits. What if I am implementing the reiser tools on
an embedded system that will never show any such output?

What about programs that execute the reiserfs tools (like bootup
scripts)...are they not allowed to redirect or filter this output?

If any of this is questionable, then I suspect reiserfs tools isn't DFSG
compliant and belongs in non-free with all it's flakiness.

-- 
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Linux 1394 - http://www.linux1394.org/
Subversion - http://subversion.tigris.org/
Deqo   - http://www.deqo.com/

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ben Collins]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:24:21PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> > Now I hope you stop with your trolling and consider speaking
> > respectfully to us. I am pretty sure that if you emailed the maintainer
> > of the package and pointed out the facts to him, he would revert the
> > change.
> 
> Dude,
> 
> You really need to calm down. Twice now recently you have opened your
> mouth and stuck your foot in when there really wasn't any need to. Take a
> Valium and do something less stressful.

Are you talking to me?

-- 
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Linux 1394 - http://www.linux1394.org/
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Deqo   - http://www.deqo.com/

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Lukas Geyer]

Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > You'll note that ReiserFS anticipated the GNU GPL V3 by including
> > clauses that forbid removal of credits in its license, and for a long
> > time I have been telling Stallman that he needs to get V3 of the GPL
> > out the door.
> 
> Oh, I think it's natural to assume that these clauses are superfluous
> because the GPL explicitly states that a distributor "may not impose
> any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
> granted herein".  If these clauses were of any legal relevance, your
> software wouldn't be redistributable at all.
> 
> Just don't use the GPL for your software if you don't like it, but
> don't complain if anyone misunderstands your homemade license
> mishmash.

Well, usually we also try to use common sense, syllogism and rocket
science to find out what the author's intent was. Fortunately Hans
Reiser made his intent clear by posting this statement to
debian-devel. The only consequence I can see is to move reiserfsprogs
to non-free. For those who have not followed the discussion and such,
the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.

Cheers,
Lukas

P.S.: Cc'ed to debian-legal, which is probably the better place to
discuss this.

-- 
Give a man an answer, and he's satisfied today. Teach him to program,
and he will be frustrated for the rest of his life. 

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ben Collins]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 11:13:59PM +0200, Anders Widman wrote:
> >> all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
> >> cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
> >> the program is DFSG-free.
> 
> > Amen. Making part of the code immutable is not what I call free
> > software. What if I want to use parts of the code and I respect the
> > copyright and license...does that mean I also have to take this part of
> > the code and output the credits? What if environment doesn't provide a
> > way to output the credits. What if I am implementing the reiser tools on
> > an embedded system that will never show any such output?
> 
> > What about programs that execute the reiserfs tools (like bootup
> > scripts)...are they not allowed to redirect or filter this output?
> 
> > If any of this is questionable, then I suspect reiserfs tools isn't DFSG
> > compliant and belongs in non-free with all it's flakiness.
> 
> 
>  Wow..  what  an  reaction  :).  Hans's  original message was that the
>  credits  were  not included with the distributed files, nothing else.
>  Or am I completely mistaken?

Sorry, I had read into some other peoples comments and made a bad
assumption about what this was refering to. So this is just about a file
that is in /usr/share/doc/...? If so, I can't see what all the fuss is
about. Just put the file back in.

-- 
Debian - http://www.debian.org/
Linux 1394 - http://www.linux1394.org/
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Anders Widman]

>> all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
>> cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
>> the program is DFSG-free.

> Amen. Making part of the code immutable is not what I call free
> software. What if I want to use parts of the code and I respect the
> copyright and license...does that mean I also have to take this part of
> the code and output the credits? What if environment doesn't provide a
> way to output the credits. What if I am implementing the reiser tools on
> an embedded system that will never show any such output?

> What about programs that execute the reiserfs tools (like bootup
> scripts)...are they not allowed to redirect or filter this output?

> If any of this is questionable, then I suspect reiserfs tools isn't DFSG
> compliant and belongs in non-free with all it's flakiness.


 Wow..  what  an  reaction  :).  Hans's  original message was that the
 credits  were  not included with the distributed files, nothing else.
 Or am I completely mistaken?



PGP public key: https://tnonline.net/secure/pgp_key.txt

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Eduard Bloch]

#include 
* Ben Collins [Sat, Apr 19 2003, 05:09:58PM]:

> >  Wow..  what  an  reaction  :).  Hans's  original message was that the
> >  credits  were  not included with the distributed files, nothing else.
> >  Or am I completely mistaken?
> 
> Sorry, I had read into some other peoples comments and made a bad
> assumption about what this was refering to. So this is just about a file
> that is in /usr/share/doc/...? If so, I can't see what all the fuss is
> about. Just put the file back in.

I may be mistaken too, but having looked trough the .diff.gz two times,
I cannot see what exactly he was talking about. The only serios thing
that has been removed in the Debian package is his spam (for
SuSE&MP3.com) from the mkreiserfs executable code.

I cannot see a big CREDITS file in the package with author names that we
could add to debian/copyright, and I fail to see what the zero-byte
AUTHORS file is good for.

So IMO it is Hans who should take some valium and rethink the whole
issue.

MfG,
Eduard.
-- 
Hallo Frauennamenannehmer!

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Francesco Paolo Lovergine]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 09:40:07PM +0300, Jarno Elonen wrote:
> 
> Additionally, it might be a good idea to provide a shoreter list of authors 
> in 
> addition to the detailed one for easier copying to 'standard copyright files' 
> like 'copying' in Debian.
> 

GNU folks generally use a Credits file for those kind of things.

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Andreas Dilger]

On Apr 19, 2003  16:55 -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> > all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
> > cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
> > the program is DFSG-free.
> 
> Amen. Making part of the code immutable is not what I call free
> software. What if I want to use parts of the code and I respect the
> copyright and license...does that mean I also have to take this part of
> the code and output the credits? What if environment doesn't provide a
> way to output the credits. What if I am implementing the reiser tools on
> an embedded system that will never show any such output?

I'm sure all the FSF/Debian folks would be thrilled if someone changed the
code in [x]emacs to not output anything about the GPL at startup, or if vim
didn't include any info about helping Ugandan orphans.

I'm not saying that I've ever liked the verbosity of the messages in
mkreiserfs, but at the same time I wouldn't ever remove them out of
courtesy to the author, regardless of whether it is in the license or not.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Daniel Burrows]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 11:54:36PM +0200, Eduard Bloch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was 
heard to say:
> #include 
> I cannot see what exactly he was talking about. The only serios thing
> that has been removed in the Debian package is his spam (for
> SuSE&MP3.com) from the mkreiserfs executable code.
> 
> I cannot see a big CREDITS file in the package with author names that we
> could add to debian/copyright, and I fail to see what the zero-byte
> AUTHORS file is good for.

  He apparently stuck this information in the reiserfsprogs README, which
is not distributed in the Debian binary package for some reason.  Since he
wasn't specific in his original comments, I have no idea whether or not this
is what he was referring to.

  Daniel

-- 
/ Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---\
| He was the kind of man who can use  |
| the word "personnel" and mean it.   |
|  -- Terry Pratchett, _The Light Fantastic_  |
\ Be like the kid in the movie!  Play chess! -- http://www.uschess.org ---/

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Michael Stone]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 11:13:59PM +0200, Anders Widman wrote:
Wow..  what  an  reaction  :).  Hans's  original message was that the
credits  were  not included with the distributed files, nothing else.
Or am I completely mistaken?
Who knows. The original message was an non-specific rant.
Mike Stone

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Chris Cheney]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 04:25:57PM -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Apr 19, 2003  16:55 -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> > > all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
> > > cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
> > > the program is DFSG-free.
> > 
> > Amen. Making part of the code immutable is not what I call free
> > software. What if I want to use parts of the code and I respect the
> > copyright and license...does that mean I also have to take this part of
> > the code and output the credits? What if environment doesn't provide a
> > way to output the credits. What if I am implementing the reiser tools on
> > an embedded system that will never show any such output?
> 
> I'm sure all the FSF/Debian folks would be thrilled if someone changed the
> code in [x]emacs to not output anything about the GPL at startup, or if vim
> didn't include any info about helping Ugandan orphans.

First of all emacs is pure bloat so who cares what it does... Vim has
one line about Ugandan orphans at startup, until now I didn't even
notice it was there. If had been pages of crap like what is spewed from
mkfs.reiserfs it would have probably been removed as well, unless it
was against Vim's license, which happens not to be GPL. As far as I can
tell if it annoyed someone enough it is legal under Vim's license to 
remove the Uganda message as well, they only require the license text
itself to remain with the application.  A GPLv3 allowing spamware would
be very annoying, I hope it doesn't happen. If anything this stupid
reiserfs spamware should be spewed before the program runs, not after,
so that the user can see what actually occured without having to scroll
back up, which depending on their console type might be difficult.

Chris

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Wouter Verhelst]

Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.

Uhm.

From the GPL, section 2:

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

That said, the screenfull of messages indeed is a nuisance; could they
be replaced by a reference to them? I'd think of something like
'development of ReiserFS was sponsored by multiple third parties; please
see  for details', or maybe 'development
of ReiserFS was sponsored by ; please
see  for details' if your contracts don't
allow for removal of those names from the output...

-- 
wouter at grep dot be
"An expert can usually spot the difference between a fake charge and a
full one, but there are plenty of dead experts." 
  -- National Geographic Channel, in a documentary about large African beasts.


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 04:25:57PM -0600, Andreas Dilger wrote:

> I'm sure all the FSF/Debian folks would be thrilled if someone changed the
> code in [x]emacs to not output anything about the GPL at startup, or if vim
> didn't include any info about helping Ugandan orphans.

> I'm not saying that I've ever liked the verbosity of the messages in
> mkreiserfs, but at the same time I wouldn't ever remove them out of
> courtesy to the author, regardless of whether it is in the license or not.

Debian never encourages anyone to violate the license of an application,
and rarely encourages disregarding the wishes of the author -- the
difference is that sometimes, if we aren't able to disregard the wishes
of the author without violating the license, the software is non-free.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:24:09AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> > the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> > remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> > this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.

> Uhm.

> From the GPL, section 2:

> c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

> Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

The choice of the word "legalese" seems appropriate here; whereas the
GPL requirement is a concession to the legal reality that one must
actively disclaim warranty in some jurisdictions to avoid lawsuits from
users (who needn't agree to the GPL in full in order to use the
software), there is no such *legal* justification for a requirement that
credits be listed in the program's output.  Therefore, while most would
concede that authors shouldn't have to expose themselves to legal
liability in order to release free software, it's not so obvious that a
requirement to list credits in the output of a running program is
necessarily DFSG-free.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Marcel Weber]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
Am Sonntag, 20.04.03, um 01:06 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Chris Cheney:
First of all emacs is pure bloat so who cares what it does... Vim has
one line about Ugandan orphans at startup, until now I didn't even
notice it was there. If had been pages of crap like what is spewed from
mkfs.reiserfs it would have probably been removed as well, unless it
was against Vim's license, which happens not to be GPL. As far as I can
tell if it annoyed someone enough it is legal under Vim's license to
remove the Uganda message as well, they only require the license text
itself to remain with the application.  A GPLv3 allowing spamware would
be very annoying, I hope it doesn't happen. If anything this stupid
reiserfs spamware should be spewed before the program runs, not after,
so that the user can see what actually occured without having to scroll
back up, which depending on their console type might be difficult.
Chris

All I can say to this is: use what you like, resp. if you don't like 
bloated software or spamware do not use it. My point is, that it should 
be a right of the original authors of the software to include credits. 
If someone else does a complete rewrite of the software, okay than we 
can discuss it, but if the rewrite means only the removal of the 
credits it is questionable.

But first of all, before we continue this discussion: What exactly has 
been removed? A readme file, the outputs during boot time, the outputs 
of mkfs.reiserfs? Has this output any impact on the usability of the 
software, so that there were good reasons the remove it? Has the 
license been violated by removing the credits?

Marcel
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:07:03PM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:

> Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions 
> from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.

It appears that, in all likelihood, the credits were inadvertently omitted,
and not intentionally removed.  In the reiserfsprogs distribution, there is a
file COPYING which contains as the software license a verbatim copy of the
GPL, while these credits are in a separate README.  I am confident that if
you contact the maintainer of the package (Ed Boraas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED], or via the bug tracking system), he will
gladly observe your wishes and include this file with the documentation.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 09:18:54PM -0400, Matt Zimmerman wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:07:03PM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> 
> > Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions 
> > from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.
> 
> It appears that, in all likelihood, the credits were inadvertently omitted,
> and not intentionally removed.  In the reiserfsprogs distribution, there is a
> file COPYING which contains as the software license a verbatim copy of the
> GPL, while these credits are in a separate README.  I am confident that if
> you contact the maintainer of the package (Ed Boraas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], or via the bug tracking system), he will
> gladly observe your wishes and include this file with the documentation.

After reading further into this thread, I see that I misunderstood which
content you were referering to (a specific reference would have been
helpful).  This seems to relate to Debian bug #152547.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn McGrath]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 23:13:59 +0200
Anders Widman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>  Wow..  what  an  reaction  :).  Hans's  original message was that the
>  credits  were  not included with the distributed files, nothing else.
>  Or am I completely mistaken?

I interpret his original message as saying his software if licensed
under a derivative of the GPL that requires an "obnoxious" advertising
clause.

It makes the license open to various interpretation as to its legality.

Maybe the license is contradicatory with regard to adding new clauses.

Maybe the license is incompatable with the GPL, for the same reasons that the
original BSD license is.

He opened a can of worms


Glenn

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Craig Dickson]

Chris Cheney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> First of all emacs is pure bloat so who cares what it does...

Don't be an ass. There are a lot of people who would say the same of
KDE, so it's silly for one of the main Debian KDE maintainers to be
saying such a thing.

Craig

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Branden Robinson]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:24:09AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> > the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> > remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> > this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.
> 
> Uhm.
> 
> From the GPL, section 2:
> 
> c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
> 
> Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

I disagree.  Some people on the debian-legal list feel that GPL 2c is
only barely tolerable from a DFSG-freeness standpoint, and some also
feel that it is ambiguously worded (see the debian-legal archives for
the gory details -- it's in the "PHPNuke license" thread, which is
huge).

GPL 2c only requires the presence of a copyright notice, warranty
disclaimer, notice that the work is licensed under the GNU GPL, and
instructions on how to view the license text.

A list of sponsors is none of these.  Preservation of such is not
required by the GNU GPL itself.  Therefore this material can be removed
under the permissions granted in section 2.  If such a restriction is de
facto being imposed by the copyright holder, then the work is not
actually licensed under the GPL, but rather the GNU GPL plus extra
restrictions, and as a result is not GPL-compatible.  If the work
dynamically links to or otherwise incorporates other copyright holders'
GPLed works, then as a consequence of section 7 of the GNU GPL, Debian
cannot distribute this work *at all*.  Not even in non-free.

Of course, to put this discussion in proper perspective, given some of
the provisions of the "GNU Free Documentation License"[1], it may be
that a future version of the GNU GPL permits copyright holders to compel
the display of arbitrary amounts of material on program startup.  GNU
Emacs, for instance, may be altered to display the GNU Manifesto in the
scratch buffer at startup, and it may be against the terms of this
future version of the GNU GPL to defeat this behavior.  So, the sort of
thing the author of the work in question is doing may actually be
perceived by the FSF as a good thing, and future versions of their
licenses may not only support it, but encourage it.

If all of this sounds surprising to people on debian-devel, I suggest
they subscribe to, or review the archives of, the debian-legal mailing
list.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

-- 
G. Branden Robinson|  We either learn from history or,
Debian GNU/Linux   |  uh, well, something bad will
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |  happen.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |  -- Bob Church


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

Trimmed CC: little; I can't imagine why this should go to -testing ...

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 02:49:36AM +0200, Marcel Weber wrote:
> All I can say to this is: use what you like, resp. if you don't like 
> bloated software or spamware do not use it. My point is, that it should 
> be a right of the original authors of the software to include credits. 
> If someone else does a complete rewrite of the software, okay than we 
> can discuss it, but if the rewrite means only the removal of the 
> credits it is questionable.

This is irrelevant.  We're not questioning whether Hans Reiser has the
right to license his own software to prohibit the removal of large
messages.  The questions being asked are:

1. Is software licensed in the manner Hans intends DFSG-free?  That is,
is it DFSG-free to require that interactive programs output a full
page of sponsorship information?  (That's a question for debian-legal.)
If not, it can not be distributed in Debian and will be relegated to
non-free.

2. Is the software licensed consistently?  If not, it's probably not
legally safe to distribute at all, and will be removed entirely unless
Hans clarifies the licensing.

Another question that comes to mind: has ReiserFS used code from projects
licensed under the GPL?  If so, he can not, in fact, place this extra
restriction, as it would be in violation of GPL clause 6.  This isn't a
special issue for programs under completely different licenses; they know
they're not GPL-compatible and don't use GPL code.  However, when people
use "modified" GPL licenses, they often don't realise that they can no
longer use code from other GPL projects.

> But first of all, before we continue this discussion: What exactly has 
> been removed? A readme file, the outputs during boot time, the outputs 
> of mkfs.reiserfs? Has this output any impact on the usability of the 
> software, so that there were good reasons the remove it? Has the 
> license been violated by removing the credits?

It's been suggested that the removed message is the one referenced in
this bug report:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no&bug=152547

Impact and "good reasons" don't matter.  Debian requires that users be
granted the right to do certain things regardless of whether they have
"good reasons".  If Hans doesn't want to grant those rights to users,
that's may be his choice, but Debian won't distribute his software.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003, Travis Crump wrote:
> all that was removed was *code* that gets compiled.  If the maintainer 
> cannot arbitrarily change any code he wants, then it is not clear that 
> the program is DFSG-free.

THEN it is not DFSG-free, and needs to be dropped from Debian, or upstream
needs to change the copyright.

Note that I am NOT talking about reiser* here, I didn't check it.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

>> On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 20:24:21 +0100,
>> Matt Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 


 > You really need to calm down. Twice now recently you have
 > opened your
 > mouth and stuck your foot in when there really wasn't any need
 > to. Take a Valium and do something less stressful.


Heh. First you bad mouth Joey Hess. And now you go up against
 Ben Collins. And both times you take what I consider impolitic
 stances  that show poor judgment (even ignoring the fact that you
 are, with nothing whatsoever to back it up) some of the most
 respected developers in Debian.

I applaud this masterly demonstration of a nadir of cluelessness.

I suppose this is accomplishment of a sort.

manoj
-- 
This fortune would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Bruce Stephens]

Andreas Dilger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

[...]

> I'm sure all the FSF/Debian folks would be thrilled if someone
> changed the code in [x]emacs to not output anything about the GPL at
> startup, or if vim didn't include any info about helping Ugandan
> orphans.

XEmacs and Emacs follow sensible guidelines: if you start them without
any arguments, then they display useful information, including
information about the GNU GPL.  If you start them such that they can
usefully display something else (like a filename that you want to
edit), then they don't display the other information, and you don't
get reminded about the GNU GPL.

So the information isn't thrust in anybody's face: if you don't give
it any arguments, Emacs doesn't have anything else it might display,
so it may as well display information about itself (how to get help,
conditions of copying, etc.).

To remove this code would be a bad technical decision---there's no
reason to.  I presume (if any code has been changed) that some of the
reiserfs code is doing something that's less technically justifiable.

(I don't know about vim.)

[...]

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

[ I wrote this yesterday when I first saw Hans' message on -devel, but
  postponed it to let the people who have actually had something to do
  with this to speak up.  But it seems that I was right when I assumed
  people wouldn't really know what this is about.  So, stamp a big FYI
  on this post.  Don't Cc me, I'll follow the discussion on -devel.
  Thanks. ]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 08:07:03PM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:

 > Please explain your reasons for removing the credits and attributions
 > from the reiserfs utilities in violation of our copyright.

 Just for the benefit of people who don't have any idea what Hans is
 talking about, the following text is printed by (upstream's but not
 Debian's) mkreiserfs before exiting:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the
primary sponsor of Reiser4. DARPA does not endorse this project;
it merely sponsors it.

Continuing core development of version 3 is mostly paid for by
Hans Reiser from money made selling licenses in addition to the
GPL to companies who don't want it known that they use ReiserFS
as a foundation for their proprietary product.  And my lawyer
asked 'People pay you money for this?'.  Yup.  Hee Hee.  Life is
good.  If you buy ReiserFS, you can focus on your value add
rather than reinventing an entire FS.  You should buy some free
software too

SuSE pays for continuing work on journaling for version 3, and
paid for much of the previous version 3 work.  Reiserfs
integration in their distro is consistently solid.

MP3.com paid for initial journaling development.

Bigstorage.com contributes to our general fund every month, and
has done so for quite a long time.

Thanks to all of those sponsors, including the secret ones.
Without you, Hans would still have that day job, and the merry
band of hackers would be missing quite a few

Have fun.

 > In the academic world, this is called plagiarism.  In the academic
 > world, knowledge is shared but fairly credited.  The GPL is born of
 > the academic tradition.

 JFTR:

  plagiarism
   n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else
and is presented as being your own work
   2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as
  if they were your own [syn: {plagiarization}, {plagiarisation},
   {piracy}]

 Marcelo

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Chris Cheney]

Of course as you already know emacs includes so many thing unrelated to
editing that anyone using it has already decided they don't mind the
bloat.  *OT* Really is there any argument that a psychoanalysis program
in an editor is not bloat? By the way emacs21 takes 50MB to install (vim
takes 15MB), and yes a full KDE install takes more at around 254MB to
install but it could be argued it provides more functionality. ;)  Of
course KDE can also be seen as bloat to people enjoying using command
line tools or flipping the switches on their altair. ;) *OT*  The point
I was trying to make was that adding bloat for no good reason at all,
in this case over a screenfull of advertising to a console util harms
its usability.

Chris

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Frank Gevaerts]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:02:15PM -0500, Chris Cheney wrote:
> in an editor is not bloat? By the way emacs21 takes 50MB to install (vim
> takes 15MB), and yes a full KDE install takes more at around 254MB to
> install but it could be argued it provides more functionality. ;) 

Are you sure ? Emacs provides a _lot_ of functionality ;)

Frank

> Chris
> 
> 
> -- 
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Andrew Suffield]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:02:15PM -0500, Chris Cheney wrote:
> Of course as you already know emacs includes so many thing unrelated to
> editing that anyone using it has already decided they don't mind the
> bloat.  *OT* Really is there any argument that a psychoanalysis program
> in an editor is not bloat?

Yes. It's the same as the argument that "a psychoanalysis program in
an editor" is not a gerbil, nameably that there's no apparent
connection.

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02) [foldoc]:

  software bloat
  
  The result of adding new features to a program
 or system to the point where the benefit of the new features
 is outweighed by the extra resources consumed ({RAM}, disk
 space or performance) and complexity of use.  Software bloat
 is an instance of Parkinson's Law: resource requirements
 expand to consume the resources available.  Causes of software
 bloat include {second-system effect} and {creeping
 featuritis}.  Commonly cited examples include Unix's "{ls}(1)"
 command, the {X Window System}, {BSD}, {Missed'em-five},
 {OS/2} and any {Microsoft} product.
  
 [{Jargon File}]
  
 (1995-10-16)

In order to demonstrate that something is "bloat", you have to
demonstrate that including it causes a problem which outweighs the
advantage.

Note that you have to do this in an environment where .5Gb of memory,
120Gb hard drives, and 1GHz processors are relatively common, and so
losing a few hundred kb of storage is not likely to bother you
much. Certainly doesn't bother me.

[As a side note, this implies that "bloat" is a context-sensitive
term, and not an absolute - much like "fast".]

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'  | Imperial College,
   `- -><-  | London, UK


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Ryan]

> > Dude,
> >
> > You really need to calm down. Twice now recently you have opened
your
> > mouth and stuck your foot in when there really wasn't any need to. Take
a
> > Valium and do something less stressful.
>
> Are you talking to me?

You are the one with the foot hanging out of your mouth so by a process of
elimination it has to be you. Really we don't need to alienate upstream
software authors with flame responses. Point out that he can file a bug and
leave it at that.


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Ryan]

> Heh. First you bad mouth Joey Hess. And now you go up against
>  Ben Collins. And both times you take what I consider impolitic
>  stances  that show poor judgment (even ignoring the fact that you
>  are, with nothing whatsoever to back it up) some of the most
>  respected developers in Debian.
>
> I applaud this masterly demonstration of a nadir of cluelessness.
>
> I suppose this is accomplishment of a sort.

Ignore me then if I don't rate in your view. On the other hand you could try
to educate me, but I guess I'm too dumb for that. Perhaps if you removed the
Debian prune from your ass I may take some notice. A Linux distribution is
not worth getting so excited over in the grand scheme of things!


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Brian Nelson]

Chris Cheney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Of course as you already know emacs includes so many thing unrelated to
> editing that anyone using it has already decided they don't mind the
> bloat.  *OT* Really is there any argument that a psychoanalysis program
> in an editor is not bloat? By the way emacs21 takes 50MB to install (vim
> takes 15MB), and yes a full KDE install takes more at around 254MB to
> install but it could be argued it provides more functionality. ;)  Of
> course KDE can also be seen as bloat to people enjoying using command
> line tools or flipping the switches on their altair. ;) *OT*  The point
> I was trying to make was that adding bloat for no good reason at all,
> in this case over a screenfull of advertising to a console util harms
> its usability.

Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before.  Why don't you take it to
slashdot instead.  Don't you have anything better to do than to make
these pointless, off-topic rants?  You haven't fucked up libvorbis in a
couple weeks.  Why don't you go randomly break that again instead?

-- 
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve.


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 19:46:41 -0700, Craig Dickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> Chris Cheney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> First of all emacs is pure bloat so who cares what it does...

Ah, a troll.

> Don't be an ass. There are a lot of people who would say the same of
> KDE, so it's silly for one of the main Debian KDE maintainers to be
> saying such a thing.

Please don't feed the troll. We already have a problem with
 the miasma of the bones beneath the bridge.

manoj
-- 
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 20:39:09 +0100, Matt Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> You are the one with the foot hanging out of your mouth so by a
> process of elimination it has to be you. Really we don't need to
> alienate upstream software authors with flame responses. Point out
> that he can file a bug and leave it at that.

If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
 consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his clientele,
 he should expect to reap what he sowed. 

manoj
-- 
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is
not always an easy sacrifice.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 20:53:11 +0100, Matt Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> A Linux distribution is not worth getting so excited over in
> the grand scheme of things!

Then you are in the wrong project. If you do not think Debian
 is important in the grand scheme of things, and if you think fawning
 obsequiousness is an appropriate stance for Debian developers to
 take, you really need to think about your commitment to this project.

manoj

-- 
On the subject of C program indentation: "In My Egotistical Opinion,
most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and
covered with dirt." Blair P. Houghton
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Andrew Suffield]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 08:39:09PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> > > Dude,
> > >
> > > You really need to calm down. Twice now recently you have opened
> your
> > > mouth and stuck your foot in when there really wasn't any need to. Take
> a
> > > Valium and do something less stressful.
> >
> > Are you talking to me?
> 
> You are the one with the foot hanging out of your mouth so by a process of
> elimination it has to be you. Really we don't need to alienate upstream
> software authors with flame responses. Point out that he can file a bug and
> leave it at that.

I'm with Ben. Hans was trolling and you're being a dick.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'  | Imperial College,
   `- -><-  | London, UK


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Jarno Elonen]

>   If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
>  consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his clientele,
>  he should expect to reap what he sowed.

The difficulty of their character unfortunately often seems to correlate with 
the important of their software. ;) So even if the upstreams sometimes heats 
up easily, please spend extra patience on them for the sake of the users. 
Pretty please.. I'd really hate to lose something like Reiserfs from Debian 
just because of a few unpolite mails back and forth.

- Jarno

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Shyamal Prasad]

"Jarno" == Jarno Elonen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Jarno> I'd really hate to lose something like Reiserfs from Debian
Jarno> just because of a few unpolite mails back and forth.

Well, if we do lose something because of a few unpolite emails alone I
don't think it qualifies as being free enough to be in Debian to
start with, right?

Not that I'm suggesting being rude to upstream, but if it was about
opinions there's a few people who'd like to see my "OS masquerading as
an editor" go away too ;-)

Cheers!
Shyamal

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Chris Cheney]

I followed Release Managers request on how to deal with the libvorbis
mess, if you have a problem with how it was dealt with bring it up on
irc. You should know this already but a message was sent out a week in
advance to the libvorbis breakage occuring so that maintainers would
about it.  And no the general consensus is not for a library to conflict
with every package that built against an older version (I don't recall
if you suggested that or if it was someone else).

Thanks,
Chris

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 12:38:31PM +0100, Bruce Stephens wrote:
> So the information isn't thrust in anybody's face: if you don't give
> it any arguments, Emacs doesn't have anything else it might display,
> so it may as well display information about itself (how to get help,
> conditions of copying, etc.).
> 
> To remove this code would be a bad technical decision---there's no
> reason to.  I presume (if any code has been changed) that some of the
> reiserfs code is doing something that's less technically justifiable.

Remember, the issue here isn't whether there's good reason to remove the
Reiser message, but whether we're allowed to (apparently not) and
whether not being allowed to do so is DFSG-free.  Even if we were happy
with simply putting it back in, it still can't go in main if it's not free.

> (I don't know about vim.)

Vim is similar; if you load it without opening a file, it displays a
"transparent" message onscreen that goes away once you do something.

If Emacs's message is about the GPL, then it can't be removed, and
that's accepted as Free by Debian, but that doesn't imply that this
transfers to sponsorship messages.

Vim's message can be removed, since Vim is dual-licensed under the GPL
and the message isn't covered by 2c.  It'd certainly be extremely rude
to remove the message, and I've never heard of anyone doing so, but it's
not against the license.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Brian Nelson]

Chris Cheney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I followed Release Managers request on how to deal with the libvorbis
> mess, if you have a problem with how it was dealt with bring it up on
> irc. You should know this already but a message was sent out a week in
> advance to the libvorbis breakage occuring so that maintainers would
> about it.  
[...]

IMO, such announcements should be sent directly to the affected
maintainers and/or to debian-devel-announce.

Diverting the rest of the pissing match to /dev/null ...

-- 
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve.


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Hans Reiser]

It is really a question of, do you respect the authors? 

Stallman never imagined that anyone in the free software business would 
be other than a gentleman.  Then the OS rather than just the kernel got 
named Linux by those who found his politics inconvenient to their 
business, and the k got dropped from all the kde utilities by persons 
not the authors of them, and it is a lot easier to imagine that 
presumptuous persons who are not gentlemen would take it upon themselves 
to remove credits because they find it inconvenient that the authors be 
given the attention and notice rather than the distros.

Feel free to make the credits more CPU efficient, reformat them to fit a 
screen, animate them, anything that adheres to the academic attribution 
spirit of respecting those who contributed years of their lives at the 
cost of substantial reductions in their lifetime incomes so that users 
(I don't care in the least about distros) could be free to modify the 
code, and the poor able to afford the same information infrastructure as 
all the rest of us.

If you want to add attributions (perhaps mentioning the inventors of 
balanced tree algorithms, etc.), or add a statement that Debian feels 
the listed persons didn't deserve the credit and somebody else did, I 
will respect any honest endeavor in that regard (and maybe even use the 
improvements in the crediting in what we distribute on our website).  
Simple deletion is hard to respect though. 

You'll note that the changes don't significantly affect me (as long as 
it is called ReiserFS I am getting at least my share of credit).  It 
mostly affects all persons other than me who aren't getting their fair 
share of credit as it is.

Academia, while it respects the right to modify knowledge, has never respected 
failures to attribute, and hopefully most of you do not either once it is 
brought to your attention.
Now, another person has suggested that this was due to an error rather 
than deliberate action.  I would be happy to apologize if this is the 
case.   I am not sure it is.

Please inform me whether Debian respects the authors of free software, 
as much as Stallman naively but understandably imagined everyone would 
without any need for anything to be said about it.

I wish Stallman would hurry it up with GPL V3.  He probably wishes 
people were gentlemen enough that it would not be needed.  He does not 
spend much time with marketeers wearing suits and counting brand 
presence in dollars I think, sigh.  I really did not expect this from 
Debian of all distros  You should not imitate RedHat in this.

--
Hans

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:54:42AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:

> It is really a question of, do you respect the authors? 

It's really much simpler than that.  The package maintainer changed
something that you didn't like, in an unreleased package in the unstable
distribution (this version of the software is not included in any released
version of Debian).  This is regrettable, but it happens.

Instead of ranting in a public forum, just send a note to the package
maintainer, tell him what you want, and resolve it between yourselves.  This
is likely to be much more effective than a flamewar.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:54:42AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> It is really a question of, do you respect the authors? 

Not much, after that lengthly diatribe which *still* fails to clearly
state what the perceived problem is.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'  | Imperial College,
   `- -><-  | London, UK


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matthew Garrett]

In chiark.mail.debian.devel, Hans Reiser wrote:

>Feel free to make the credits more CPU efficient, reformat them to fit a 
>screen, animate them, anything that adheres to the academic attribution 
>spirit of respecting those who contributed years of their lives at the 
>cost of substantial reductions in their lifetime incomes so that users 
>(I don't care in the least about distros) could be free to modify the 
>code, and the poor able to afford the same information infrastructure as 
>all the rest of us.

So

This code partially funded by DARPA, SuSE, MP3.com, bigstorage.com and others

would be entirely acceptable to you? The reason for removing that code
is that giving a lengthy discussion of the intricacies of every single
bit of funding is something that users don't need to see, and makes it
harder for them to find the relevant information. There is no desire to
remove credit, merely a desire to increase the usability of the software
within the terms of the license.

>If you want to add attributions (perhaps mentioning the inventors of 
>balanced tree algorithms, etc.), or add a statement that Debian feels 
>the listed persons didn't deserve the credit and somebody else did, I 
>will respect any honest endeavor in that regard (and maybe even use the 
>improvements in the crediting in what we distribute on our website).  
>Simple deletion is hard to respect though. 

That's a personal opinion. However, the GPL explicitly allows such
modification of code. You're free to relicense code that you hold the
copyright to under a different license that forbids this - however,
Debian will probably regard that license as non-free, which would be a
shame.

However, usually we /don't/ choose to exercise that freedom. Recently
there was a discussion regarding whether a note in a GPLed application
suggesting that users should buy the author's commercial derivative
should be removed or not - the concensus opinion was that it shouldn't
as it was a simple, unobtrusive note. The removal of the reams of output
from mkreiserfs was for usability purposes, and if you'd contacted the
maintainer to request that he add a note crediting those responsible
then he'd probably have done so.

>You'll note that the changes don't significantly affect me (as long as 
>it is called ReiserFS I am getting at least my share of credit).  It 
>mostly affects all persons other than me who aren't getting their fair 
>share of credit as it is.

Giving people due credit doesn't generally require 24 lines of output.
That's a *screenful*.

>Academia, while it respects the right to modify knowledge, has never respected
>  failures to attribute, and hopefully most of you do not either once it is
>  brought to your attention.

Academia, in general, only requires attribution in an unobtrusive
fashion along the lines of (Reiser, 1999). Journals do not permit the
author section in a paper to provide information about off-hand
discussions the author had with their lawyer.

>I wish Stallman would hurry it up with GPL V3.  He probably wishes 
>people were gentlemen enough that it would not be needed.  He does not 
>spend much time with marketeers wearing suits and counting brand 
>presence in dollars I think, sigh.  I really did not expect this from 
>Debian of all distros  You should not imitate RedHat in this.

If you want people to engage in a specific subset of the activities that
your license allows, choose a license that restricts what's allowed to
that subset rather than pretending to give people freedoms you don't
want them to use.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:54:42AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> It is really a question of, do you respect the authors? 

Who do you respect, Hans?  Many Debian Developers are also Free Software
authors.  How much respect are you showing us with your brazen
accusations of impropriety?  Did it occur to you that posting a rant to
the main development mailing list of the distribution might not be the
best way to resolve your grievance?  Do you realize that after a brace
of beautifully crafted non-specific rants on your part, most members of
the Debian community reading this thread have *no idea* what offense
you're referring to?

There seem to be two possible causes for your rage that people are aware
of: the unintentional omission from the binary package of a credits list
contained in a README file, or the removal of an onerous sponsorship
blurb from the output of the program.  Can you clarify which of these
two items is the object of your concern?

Or if you'd rather continue the non-specific ranting, I'm sure no one'll
mind one more thread of the sort on this particular mailing list...

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Peter van Rossum]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Feel free to make the credits more CPU efficient, reformat them to fit a 
> screen, animate them, anything that adheres to the academic attribution 
> spirit of respecting those who contributed years of their lives at the 
> cost of substantial reductions in their lifetime incomes so that users 
> (I don't care in the least about distros) could be free to modify the 
> code, and the poor able to afford the same information infrastructure as 
> all the rest of us.

Just for the record, what is it exactly what it being talked about?
Is it about the 21 line long list of sponsors (DARPA, Hans Reiser, SuSE,
MP3.com, Bigstorage.com) that the program outputs (Marcelo Magallon
posted the list today), or is it about the omission of credits and
attributions in some README or AUTHORS file? 

The first few quotes lines about "CPU efficient, reformat them..." suggest
that it is the former, but "spirit of respecting those who contributed
year of their lives at the cost..." (and the remainder of your
e-mail) suggest the latter (or suggests at least that it is something
else than the list of sponsors). 

> Now, another person has suggested that this was due to an error rather 
> than deliberate action.  I would be happy to apologize if this is the 
> case.   I am not sure it is.

I am sure that the output from the program has been deliberatly
modified; if some README or AUTHORS file has been omitted from the
documentation it was very likely an accident and then there is no
reason for this lengthy discussion - the maintainer can just put the
omitted file back.

Peter van Rossum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn McGrath]

What if the full statment was shown once on installation, but not every
time the program is used, would that be an acceptable compromise to you ?


Glenn

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:34:25PM +1000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> What if the full statment was shown once on installation, but not every
> time the program is used, would that be an acceptable compromise to you ?

Again: this is the least of the problems; more important is 1: what are
the real distribution terms? (Do we have legal permission to remove this?
Most guessing says no.) and then 2: are these terms DFSG-free?

It's not completely obvious whether requiring that a page of sponsorship
information being shown on installation is DFSG-free; recent discussions
on d-legal about GFDL invariant sections makes me guess no.  It'd be a bad
idea to recommend a "solution" that would itself be DFSG-unfree.

This aside, it's very clear to me that responding to Hans is a complete
waste of time.  He's trolling.  If he's just going to keep ranting aimlessly,
I'd say Debian can only assume we're in violation of whatever the license
is, that whatever the license is is undistributable, nuke the package
and point people to a clearly free alternative (possibly written by far
more reasonable folks), XFS.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Hans Reiser]

Glenn McGrath wrote:
What if the full statment was shown once on installation, but not every
time the program is used, would that be an acceptable compromise to you ?
Glenn
 

Maybe, but not very many people run mkreiserfs frequently.   For most 
users, mkreiserfs is performed once on installation, or close enough to 
not matter a lot.

--
Hans

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Chris Cheney]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 09:40:50AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Maybe, but not very many people run mkreiserfs frequently.   For most 
> users, mkreiserfs is performed once on installation, or close enough to 
> not matter a lot.

What about the fact that most installers don't even show the output of
mkfs.*?  I think the primary reason debian still does is because it
hasn't finished its gui installer but this will likely be done for d-i
eventually.

Chris

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Oleg Drokin]

Hello!

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 03:05:16PM -0400, Travis Crump wrote:
> You mean a bug report like 
> ?  Oh, wait... 
>  What if someone wanted to write a gtk frontend to mkreiserfs?  The 

Last time we spoke with EVMS folks about this kind of stuff, we agreed that 
they'd open
a pipe to mkreiserfs and then will show the mkreiserfs' output in separate 
window.
(in fact not only mkreiserfs's output, but output of all tools they run).

Flames to /dev/null.

And there are (were?) another set of tools for making/modifying reiserfs 
filesystems
(except that there is no fsck) called progsreiserfs. (not being developed 
anymore, I think, but it
works as is). Use that, if you like it more.

Bye,
Oleg

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 04:41:43AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:

 >   This code partially funded by DARPA, SuSE, MP3.com, bigstorage.com
 >   and others
 > 
 > would be entirely acceptable to you?

 What about:

 This code partially funded by DARPA, SuSE, MP3.com, bigstorage.com
 and others.  For more info: /usr/share/doc//copyright.

 and put the original text in /usr/share/doc//copyright.  I
 think that serves Hans' intention and purpose better.

 Marcelo

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Yury Umanets]

Oleg Drokin wrote:
Hello!
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 03:05:16PM -0400, Travis Crump wrote:
 

You mean a bug report like 
?  Oh, wait... 
What if someone wanted to write a gtk frontend to mkreiserfs?  The 
   

Last time we spoke with EVMS folks about this kind of stuff, we agreed that 
they'd open
a pipe to mkreiserfs and then will show the mkreiserfs' output in separate 
window.
(in fact not only mkreiserfs's output, but output of all tools they run).
Flames to /dev/null.
And there are (were?) another set of tools for making/modifying reiserfs 
filesystems
(except that there is no fsck) called progsreiserfs. (not being developed 
anymore, I think, but it
works as is). Use that, if you like it more.
Bye,
   Oleg
 

It is developed yet, but more slowly than before :)
--
Yury Umanets
"We're flying high, we're watching the world passes by..."

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Ryan]

> The difficulty of their character unfortunately often seems to correlate
with
> the important of their software. ;) So even if the upstreams sometimes
heats
> up easily, please spend extra patience on them for the sake of the users.
> Pretty please.. I'd really hate to lose something like Reiserfs from
Debian
> just because of a few unpolite mails back and forth.

It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
(does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
borders).


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

On Sunday 20 April 2003 22:30, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
>  consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his clientele,
>  he should expect to reap what he sowed.

Buit, this doesn't get any problems solved. Using 'an eye for an eye' as 
basic for interaction with humans (i.e. neither lawyers nor real trolls) 
doesn't work.

Uli

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Jarno Elonen]

> It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> borders).

Quite true. And while it certainly looks like Hans' was angry or at least 
frustrated, I for one, consider my English better than the average among 
Finns but often don't have a clue how my English messages sound for a native. 
They are probably full of grammar errors, making them sound 
careless/negligent and contain words that sound funny/obsolete or expressions 
that are not exactly suitable in the situation.

In a face-to-face conversation these shortcomings are compensated by body 
language. A slightly raised tone of voice is immediately reflected on the 
other person's face so you don't have to exaggerate like in email.

- Jarno

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:14:05AM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> borders).

Nice try, but Hans is an ugly American, I'm afraid.  (Born and bred in
California?)  Went to grad school in Berkeley, but left because no one
listened to his ideas.

- Ted

P.S.  This is the first I've heard about GPLv3 having the equivalent
of an advertising clause (in fact, it's worse than an advertising
clause, since at least the BSD advertising clause was only in
documentation, not in the program startup messages).  Given the FSF's past
position on the BSD advertising clause, it seems... surprising... to
me that RMS would put such a clause in GPLv3.  I am eagerly awaiting
to hear RMS's views on the subject.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 12:58, Jarno Elonen wrote:
> > It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> > (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> > email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> > honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> > etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> > borders).

[SNIP]

> In a face-to-face conversation these shortcomings are compensated by body 
> language. A slightly raised tone of voice is immediately reflected on the 
> other person's face so you don't have to exaggerate like in email.

Definatly, even though there you can be misunderstood by the native english 
speaking, because of
the directness in some european cultures, that are mostly avoided, meaning 
things are said well
packaged, not to offend the counterpart.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
This universe shipped by weight, not by volume.  Some expansion of the
contents may have occurred during shipment.



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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Lars Bahner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 01:10:47AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> This aside, it's very clear to me that responding to Hans is a complete
> waste of time.  He's trolling.  If he's just going to keep ranting aimlessly,
> I'd say Debian can only assume we're in violation of whatever the license
> is, that whatever the license is is undistributable, nuke the package
> and point people to a clearly free alternative (possibly written by far
> more reasonable folks), XFS.

Let me just start with saying that I started out with agreeing
with Hans until it became possible that he doesn't really know
what it is he wants to be saying.

That is: he obviously perceived Debian as having deliberately
removed some credits, and - somewhat agitated - posted an e-mail
about this to several mailboxes and lists, which is understandable
to a certain extent.

Now it would seem the reply from Debian has only agitated Hans
further to the point where he isn't listening to what we are
trying to convey to him about:
manners;
apologies;
and request of clarification.

I believe all Debian developers wishes to adhere to and honour the
academian tradition of giving due credits.

The way this discussion has turned out it seems that the way we
practice the upholding of this tradition doesn't satisfy one of
the upstream authors, namely Hans. 

I have been assumeing all along that this discussion was only relevant
to the reiserfsprogs-packages, not the kernel-code itself. This may or
may not be the case, but as fas as the filesystem utilities go there 
is of course a free alternative in debian in the progsreiserfs-package.

So I propose that Ed drops the reiserfsprogs-package for now, initiates
a dialog directly with Hans Reiser to see if this matter can be settled
soberly, while the rest of us use progsreiserfs.
-- 
Lars Bahner: http://lars.bahner.com/; Voice: +4792884492; Fax: +4792974492


Key fingerprint = A913 7B54 E5FC 804D C12B  18DE 493D 83DE 5DE6 C5D6

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:36:10 +0200, Ulrich Eckhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Sunday 20 April 2003 22:30, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
>> consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his
>> clientele, he should expect to reap what he sowed.

> Buit,

I see. So, you don't practice what you preach, eh?

> this doesn't get any problems solved. Using 'an eye for an
> eye' as basic for interaction with humans (i.e. neither lawyers nor
> real trolls) doesn't work.

Rudeness does not solve things. OK. I suppose the people who
 are being rude to us should also understand that, no? And there are
 limits to the abasement I am going to perform before attempting to
 demonstrate to the people being rude to me the truth of the adage
 that rudeness does not pay.

Take that as you will.

manoj
-- 
Hear about the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus?
Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Walter Landry]

Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> > the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> > remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> > this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.
> 
> Uhm.
> 
> From the GPL, section 2:
> 
> c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
> 
> Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

Actually, what Hans Reiser should do is assign copyright for parts of
the work to all of his sponsors.  Then, an "appropriate copyright
notice" would list all of their names.  That would be fully within the
letter of the GPL.

Regards,
Walter Landry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Mark Rafn]

> > c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> > when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> > interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> > announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> > notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> > a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> > these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> > License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> > does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> > the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

> Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> > GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> > is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> > messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> > wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

It's important to note that it must display "an announcement..." which 
meets certain criteria.  It does not forbid modification of form or 
content of the announcment.

You are free to remove whatever announcement is there and replace it with 
a differently-worded one that contains the required elements.

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Walter Landry wrote:
> Actually, what Hans Reiser should do is assign copyright for parts of
> the work to all of his sponsors.  Then, an "appropriate copyright
> notice" would list all of their names.  That would be fully within the
> letter of the GPL.

I'm not sure even this is required.  It seems reasonable, and I'd expect 
most modifiers would do this.  However, it may be an "appropriate notice" 
to just say "this work is copyright (c) 2003 by multiple authors, see 
"AUTHORS" for details.

IANAL, so I don't know where the edge is here.
--
Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]  

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Brian M. Carlson]

[subscribed to -legal, not to -devel; Cc: accordingly]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:24:09AM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> > the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> > remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> > this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.
> 
> Uhm.
> 
> From the GPL, section 2:
> 
> c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
 ^
> when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
  

I tried mkreiserfs out (I use good old ext2!) and the only "command" it
reads interactively is a "y" or "n" when asked to continue formatting my
test file which is not a block special device.

> interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but

> does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
  
> the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
  

Let's assume for a second that the yes-or-no response *is* a command
(which is debatable). GPL 2c only requires that one print or display 1)
a copyright notice; 2) a notice of warranty or the lack thereof; 3) a
notice that redistribution is permitted under the GPL; and 4) how to
view the GPL. It does not require that one spew almost an entire
screenful of advertisement. And, because neither mkreiserfs nor
reiserfsck even display a copyright notice, it falls under the
exception.

> Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message

Which it doesn't.

> messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

I do. DFSG 3 requires that "[t]he license must allow modifications and
derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms
as the license of the original software." GPL 2c passes muster only
because it displays license material. Even that is controversial on this
list. debian-legal has consistently held that license material can be
immutable and still free. I have never seen debian-legal say that
advertisements and conversations with one's lawyer can be immutable and
still free. If you disagree, please show me a reference.

-- 
Brian M. Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 0x560553e7
"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare
 to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it
 after all." --Douglas Adams


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Britton]

Keep in mind you're talking to a bunch of people who are amoung the
staunchest free software advocates around.  Unlike you, most of them make
$0 for all their contributions. Your implication that we're somehow
profiting from the removal of credits is ludicrous.  In any case, there is
already a widely accepted defacto standard for credits in software
circles, much as their is in the academic press.  Try sending your next
paper off with the condition that it be pulished only if the journal
prints the names of all the contributors in really big letters together
with a solicitation for money all on a page of its own.

Well maybe if you were Einstein they would publish it.  But ReiserFS is a
long way from being a technical necessity.  In fact its got a reputation
for causing problems.  Noisy licenses (and noisy arguments about noisy
licenses) certainly benefit you; their usefulness to the community is
questionable.

Britton Kerin
__
GNU GPL: "The Source will be with you... always."

Britton Kerin

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Hans Reiser wrote:

> It is really a question of, do you respect the authors?
>
> Stallman never imagined that anyone in the free software business would
> be other than a gentleman.  Then the OS rather than just the kernel got
> named Linux by those who found his politics inconvenient to their
> business, and the k got dropped from all the kde utilities by persons
> not the authors of them, and it is a lot easier to imagine that
> presumptuous persons who are not gentlemen would take it upon themselves
> to remove credits because they find it inconvenient that the authors be
> given the attention and notice rather than the distros.
>
> Feel free to make the credits more CPU efficient, reformat them to fit a
> screen, animate them, anything that adheres to the academic attribution
> spirit of respecting those who contributed years of their lives at the
> cost of substantial reductions in their lifetime incomes so that users
> (I don't care in the least about distros) could be free to modify the
> code, and the poor able to afford the same information infrastructure as
> all the rest of us.
>
> If you want to add attributions (perhaps mentioning the inventors of
> balanced tree algorithms, etc.), or add a statement that Debian feels
> the listed persons didn't deserve the credit and somebody else did, I
> will respect any honest endeavor in that regard (and maybe even use the
> improvements in the crediting in what we distribute on our website).
> Simple deletion is hard to respect though.
>
> You'll note that the changes don't significantly affect me (as long as
> it is called ReiserFS I am getting at least my share of credit).  It
> mostly affects all persons other than me who aren't getting their fair
> share of credit as it is.
>
> Academia, while it respects the right to modify knowledge, has never 
> respected failures to attribute, and hopefully most of you do not either once 
> it is brought to your attention.
>
> Now, another person has suggested that this was due to an error rather
> than deliberate action.  I would be happy to apologize if this is the
> case.   I am not sure it is.
>
> Please inform me whether Debian respects the authors of free software,
> as much as Stallman naively but understandably imagined everyone would
> without any need for anything to be said about it.
>
> I wish Stallman would hurry it up with GPL V3.  He probably wishes
> people were gentlemen enough that it would not be needed.  He does not
> spend much time with marketeers wearing suits and counting brand
> presence in dollars I think, sigh.  I really did not expect this from
> Debian of all distros  You should not imitate RedHat in this.
>
> --
> Hans
>

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Anthony DeRobertis]

On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 23:41, Glenn Maynard wrote:

> 1. Is software licensed in the manner Hans intends DFSG-free?  That is,
> is it DFSG-free to require that interactive programs output a full

NON-interactive programs. mkreiserfs is not interactive. It is passed
arguments on the command line, makes a file system, and exits.

If there actually is a page full of credits in that usage, then there
are very good reasons to remove it. It makes it very difficult to use in
shell scripts. It makes it difficult to use on terminals w/o limitless
scroll back. It makes it difficult to find error messages, both from it
and other commands.

There is a serious problem with $CMD if the common usage of $CMD turns
out to be:
$CMD $ARGS > /dev/null 2>&1
If I can't legally fix $CMD, I doubt that $CMD is DFSG-free.


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin Pool]

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 22:45:59 -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:54:42AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
>> It is really a question of, do you respect the authors? 
> 
> Who do you respect, Hans?  Many Debian Developers are also Free
> Software authors.  How much respect are you showing us with your
> brazen accusations of impropriety?

How would you like it if somebody distributed your software with
changes you didn't like, and with your name filed off?  It's not so
hard to understand that it might at least momentarily make you feel
offended and reconsider whether using the GPL was really a good idea.

> Do you realize that after a brace of beautifully crafted
> non-specific rants on your part, most members of the Debian
> community reading this thread have *no idea* what offense you're
> referring to?

It seems fairly easy to understand that Hans is upset that Debian has
removed the startup message from mkfs.  By modifying the program
against the wishes of the upstream maintainer Debian is creating what
some people call a "hostile fork".

Certainly the GPL allows anybody to fork projects, but I'd hope it's
clear that gratuitous forking is not polite behavior, nor in the long
term interests of either Debian's users or the project itself.  Not
everything that is permitted is beneficial.

"We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
change what we like" is not a good message to send.  Even if you don't
use the package in question, other maintainers reading this thread
might be less willing to cooperate with Debian in future.

There is some validity to #152547; in some circumstances having a big
banner at startup is inconvenient.  However just cutting it out is not
a good way to resolve the bug.  The maintainer made a mistake here.
It ought to be obvious that removing a author/sponsor notice would be
likely to offend.  It would have been much better to contact the
upstream author and ask for a shorter message, a --quiet option, or
displaying the message during installation, etc.  

Please talk to the upstream author about changes, especially in
sensitive areas.  Please don't just unilaterally fork unless there is
no alternative.  A little cooperation is needed.

-- 
Martin

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:25:39PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> "We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
> change what we like" is not a good message to send.  Even if you don't

Thankfully, Debian isn't sending this message.

Hans would apparently like people to believe that, but Hans is wrong.

> A little cooperation is needed.

Yes, but you should be saying this to Hans, not Steve.

> There is some validity to #152547; in some circumstances having a big
> banner at startup is inconvenient.  However just cutting it out is not
> a good way to resolve the bug.  The maintainer made a mistake here.
> It ought to be obvious that removing a author/sponsor notice would be
> likely to offend.

It's not obvious.  Removing a sponsorship notice is something I'd do without
a second thought; it's nothing more than advertisement and it's just as
annoying to me as a banner ad.

(Removing author notices is more objectionable, but irrelevant; it's only
sponsorship notices we're talking about here, I believe.  Hans certainly
hasn't bothered to say what he's talking about, though, so we're all
guessing anyway.  If it was up to me, I'd remove the
package--probably undistributable--and point people at XFS.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin Pool]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:22:36 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:25:39PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
>> "We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
>> change what we like" is not a good message to send.  Even if you don't
> 
> Thankfully, Debian isn't sending this message.

For me (as an author whose software is in Debian) this is exactly how
it comes across.

Some people here apparently delight in pissing off upstream authors
who object to the way their software is modified.  There are plenty of
posts saying that Debian can do what it likes, and precious few
acknowledging that Hans ought to have any say in what is done to the
software he wrote.  

Authors have a moral right (and a legal one in some places) not to
have their work mutilated.

I personally would not have put such a large and informal notice in my
software, but perhaps Hans has good reasons, such as promising the
sponsors that they would be prominently acknowledged.  (That seems to
be required by some research grants.)

Debian should not stomp all over the author's intentions if it is
reasonably avoidable.  The alternatives do not seem to have been
adequately explored.

> > It ought to be obvious that removing a author/sponsor notice would be
> > likely to offend.
> It's not obvious.  Removing a sponsorship notice is something I'd do
> without a second thought; it's nothing more than advertisement and
> it's just as annoying to me as a banner ad.

I say "it ought to be obvious", because Hans put the message in there
intending it to be prominent, rather than (say) putting it in a doc
file.  It is reasonable to assume that he cared about putting this
message in front of everyone who used it.  If you can't understand why
removing it would annoy him then I really doubt your ability to
cooperate with other people.

-- 
Martin

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Michael Tindal]

On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 00:53, Martin Pool wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:22:36 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:25:39PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> >> "We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
> >> change what we like" is not a good message to send.  Even if you don't
> > 
> > Thankfully, Debian isn't sending this message.
> 
> For me (as an author whose software is in Debian) this is exactly how
> it comes across.

I am an author as well, and the message did not come across to me as you
have stated, but hey, to each his own.

> Some people here apparently delight in pissing off upstream authors
> who object to the way their software is modified.  There are plenty of
> posts saying that Debian can do what it likes, and precious few
> acknowledging that Hans ought to have any say in what is done to the
> software he wrote.  

I do not understand your accusations here.  No one stated what you said,
and no one has delibaretly attempted to upset Hans.  Quite the contrary,
actually.  I have seen _several_ people attempting to find a compromise,
but the issue isnt in the credits anymore, as you seem to think.  The
real issue, as stated several times, is whether or not the license that
reiserfsprogs uses is distributable or DFSG-free.  The problem stems
from the notion that we are not allowed to remove those credits under
the terms of the license.

> Authors have a moral right (and a legal one in some places) not to
> have their work mutilated.

I do not consider removing 20-something lines of output from a program
whose purpose is to create a filesystem mutilating it.  By contrast,
mkfs.ext[2,3] and mkfs.xfs do not output such messages, simply the
status of the task at hand.  As an author, I can see how these messages
severely hinder usability.  They would be more appropriate in a CREDITS
or AUTHORS file.

> I personally would not have put such a large and informal notice in my
> software, but perhaps Hans has good reasons, such as promising the
> sponsors that they would be prominently acknowledged.  (That seems to
> be required by some research grants.)

Prominently does not necessarily imply causing the program to be
unusable.  A one line message stating "This program was funded my
multiple sources; see the file CREDITS" would suffice.

> Debian should not stomp all over the author's intentions if it is
> reasonably avoidable.  The alternatives do not seem to have been
> adequately explored.

The authors intentions are not always the correct ones, nor those in
agreement with the project.  Debian is an distribution, it owes a
service to its users; correcting usability issues is a responsibility
Debian has towards its users.

> > > It ought to be obvious that removing a author/sponsor notice would be
> > > likely to offend.
> > It's not obvious.  Removing a sponsorship notice is something I'd do
> > without a second thought; it's nothing more than advertisement and
> > it's just as annoying to me as a banner ad.
> 
> I say "it ought to be obvious", because Hans put the message in there
> intending it to be prominent, rather than (say) putting it in a doc
> file.  It is reasonable to assume that he cared about putting this
> message in front of everyone who used it.  If you can't understand why
> removing it would annoy him then I really doubt your ability to
> cooperate with other people.

I am really doubting your ability to cooperate with others; but that is
irrelevant to the topic at hand.  These notices, regardless of Hans'
intentions, belong in a file, not the output of mkreiserfs.

> -- 
> Martin
> 

Mike

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[David Nusinow]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 02:53:38PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> Debian should not stomp all over the author's intentions if it is
> reasonably avoidable.  The alternatives do not seem to have been
> adequately explored.
You're forgetting that we don't really know what Reiser's intentions
are. His complaints don't address anything specific, but instead throw
out terms like plagiarism and bowdlerization in order to avoid listing
specific complaints. Reiser didn't discuss this with the maintainer and
come to an agreement, but instead threw a hissy fit accusing the whole
project of some abstract crimes. We don't know if the problem is due to
the accidental removal of the credits list from the documentation, or
if it's from the 24 line credit list from the software itself. Maybe
it's both, but Hans isn't helping us figure it out. So how is the
maintainer supposed to figure out resonable alternatives if no one can
figure out what we're finding alternatives to?

> I say "it ought to be obvious", because Hans put the message in there
> intending it to be prominent, rather than (say) putting it in a doc
> file.  It is reasonable to assume that he cared about putting this
> message in front of everyone who used it.  If you can't understand why
> removing it would annoy him then I really doubt your ability to
> cooperate with other people.
Honestly, how bad is removing this message? Is removing this really
plagiarism? No, as credits will be given as due in the credits file. Is
this bowlderization? Bowdler is a man who took Shakespeare and re-wrote
it to remove the sexual bits, trying to sterilize it. Somehow, I don't
think that's what's happening here in any fashion. Is Hans' art as a
programmer really hanging on this piece of code? It's not like this
affects the ability of the program to function properly, and in fact
probably makes it function better in more cases. So it's not like this
move is hurting anyone's reputation. And finally, does this move
prevent someone else from distributing the program in the pristine
manner that Reiser wants? No, he or someone else is welcome to make
unofficial debs and link them from apt-get.org for the world to use.

So, ultimately, what harm does this do to the author? If all he cares
about is his reputation, then he's certaintly not doing a good job of
bolstering it in this particular forum. He's not representing his
sponsors very well either.

 - David

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Eric Schwartz]

I say "it ought to be obvious", because Hans put the message in there
intending it to be prominent, rather than (say) putting it in a doc
file.  It is reasonable to assume that he cared about putting this
message in front of everyone who used it.  If you can't understand why
removing it would annoy him then I really doubt your ability to
cooperate with other people.
You have to realize, we still don't know that you're correct about what 
he's upset about,
becuase  Hans has not yet come out and said exactly what the problem 
is.  One early
message he posted in this thread indicated to me that his real problem 
was the lack of
the author list in the Debian package of reiserfsprogs.

And in any event, I don't think debian-devel is the place for him to 
air his concerns.  Except
in extreme cases, we don't overrule a package maintainer's decision to 
package the software
he maintains however he likes.  I don't see any indication he has tried 
unsuccessfully to air his
concerns with the maintainer, either via private email, or by filing a 
bug, so regardless of our opinons,
I don't see that at this point, any of us can do much more than 
generate more material for a flamewar.

I have sent Hans private email, suggesting that he try to work this out 
off-list before resorting to
what appeared to me to be a rather vitriolic email as a first approach 
to the project as a whole.
I don't see that any of the discussion that is going on at this point 
is going to affect in any way the contents
of the reiserfsprogs package, and certainly not in a way that Hans 
would like.

Consider: you don't know what Hans doesn't like.  You don't know how 
he'd like things to change.  You don't
know what he'd consider acceptable, or not.  Nor do any of us, because 
he still hasn't said.  As a result, about
all we can do as a project is comment on whether or not what the 
maintainer did is allowable, and it appears
that removing the message from mkreiserfs is, but deleting the 
contributors list isn't (though that appears to be
unintentional).  We can, as individual members, comment on how we feel 
about what happened, but given that
we don't know exactly what Hans is upset about,  even that is perhaps a 
bit presumptuous.

I suggest we try to give this a rest until Hans can come up with a 
clear statement of what's wrong, and
preferably one that includes his attempts to resolve things privately 
and the results thereof, before we generate
too much more flameage.  Once we know what the actual problem is, we 
can consider what solutions might exist.
As it is, I don't see how we can do anything but fuel the flames.

-=Eric

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin Pool]

On 22 Apr 2003, Michael Tindal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Authors have a moral right (and a legal one in some places) not to
> > have their work mutilated.
> 
> I do not consider removing 20-something lines of output from a
> program whose purpose is to create a filesystem mutilating it.  By
> contrast, mkfs.ext[2,3] and mkfs.xfs do not output such messages,
> simply the status of the task at hand.  As an author, I can see how
> these messages severely hinder usability.  They would be more
> appropriate in a CREDITS or AUTHORS file.

I agree that a file would be a more appropriate location.  I'm just
asking that Debian persuade Hans rather than unilaterally removing it.

Note that reiserfsprogs-3.6.4-4.diff has in fact not moved the credits
to another file, but *removed them entirely*.  The sponsors of the
program are not mentioned at all in the Debian package.  This is
unconscionable.

> Prominently does not necessarily imply causing the program to be
> unusable.

That kind of hyperbole is not helpful.

  unusable
   adj 1: impossible to use [syn: {unserviceable}, {unuseable}]
   2: not able to perform its normal function [syn: {inoperable}]

-- 
Martin 

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder]

On Saturday 19 April 2003 20:32, Thomas Viehmann wrote:

> b) The licensing information certainly ist misleading: The first line says
>GPL 2, period. Then there's lengthy information for assigning copyright
>of patches. After that, there is that funny "nothing ... shall be
> interpreted to allow you to fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my
> credits ...", which I'd probably interpret as "you cannot distribute
> without something that says...".

Well, doesn't the GPL say something on it being illegal to impose additional 
restrictions on distribution?

> c) Someone running fsck because he has trouble with his hard drive probably
>doesn't want to see the history of mankind from the beginning to the
>creation of reiser v3.
[...]

As a user of reiserfs: the long messages are really just annoying. the name of 
authors and sponsors is not something that I am interested in when running 
the program, this applies to programs like gcc and equally to small system 
tools like fsck. 

If the credits were really removed, this was an error. But the credits should 
really be moved into the '-v' output, or even better into the documentation.

> No other author of
> any piece of GPL'd software I know of has such obnoxious sponsorship
> messages. In fact, they are hindering usability of the tools.

Imagine if gcc had messages listing all companies that have sponsored and do 
sponsor gcc hacking...

You know, if I'm to display advertisements on my screen, I want to get 
something for it. I guess if Reiser doesn't want an fsck/mkreiserfs without 
his beloved credits message, it's time to dump reiserfs from Debian and 
switch to ext3/XFS/whatever.

cheers
-- vbi

-- 
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.  I'm frightened
of the old ones.
-- John Cage


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 02:53:38PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:22:36 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:

> > On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:25:39PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> >> "We don't care what the author wants, we have the legal right to
> >> change what we like" is not a good message to send.  Even if you don't

> > Thankfully, Debian isn't sending this message.

> For me (as an author whose software is in Debian) this is exactly how
> it comes across.

> Some people here apparently delight in pissing off upstream authors
> who object to the way their software is modified.  There are plenty of
> posts saying that Debian can do what it likes, and precious few
> acknowledging that Hans ought to have any say in what is done to the
> software he wrote.  

> Authors have a moral right (and a legal one in some places) not to
> have their work mutilated.

You can assert a moral right to control how your work is used, or you
can write Free Software.  You don't get to do both at once.  If Hans
wants to assert his moral rights, we will certainly respect that; as
I've said, many Debian developers are also software authors themselves,
so it certainly shouldn't be said that we don't recognize the value of
our upstreams' efforts.  But asserting those rights means relinquishing
any corresponding right to claim that your work is Free; it means
abdicating any possibility that your work will be included in Debian.

While I will certainly respect Hans's rights, his assertion that we have
an obligation to include this advertising blurb, coupled with an
appeal to a solidarity with Free Software authors that he has himself
abandoned, is utterly contemptible.  Whatever the slight, perceived
or real, his slanderous accusations against us are out of line; his
stance of moral superiority, a farce.  Debian policy *requires*
acknowledgement of the contributions of each and every author, in the
form of a copyright file in each package, but this apparently isn't what
Hans wants.  That he believes he's entitled to something more than what
any other Free Software author on the planet asks for just shows how
full of himself he really is.

> I personally would not have put such a large and informal notice in my
> software,

I think this is much more fundamental than you suggest it to be.  You
understand the community spirit of Free Software, and Hans, clearly,
does not.  I hope no stomping on authors' wishes was ever intended;
speaking at least for myself, I try to keep on good terms with my
upstreams, and would happily entertain practically any request from them
(though I might in the end refuse, depending on the circumstances).
Such a spirit of cooperation is a two-way street, however, and Hans
doesn't come across as a very cooperative lad.  If he were really the
upstanding member of the Free Software community that he makes himself
out to be, I would think he'd have learned that in addition to sharing,
*communication* (in contrast with, say, bitching) is a necessary skill
in any community.

Regards,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 01:19:17AM -0400, Michael Tindal wrote:
> I do not understand your accusations here.  No one stated what you said,
> and no one has delibaretly attempted to upset Hans.  Quite the contrary,
> actually.  I have seen _several_ people attempting to find a compromise,

Indeed.  I don't know where Martin is getting that from; he certainly didn't
provide any citations.  People on the Debian side have been extremely
reasonable (at least when talking to Hans; not when talking to, say, Ben
Collins ...)

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 01:04:56AM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> You can assert a moral right to control how your work is used, or you
> can write Free Software.  You don't get to do both at once.  If Hans
> wants to assert his moral rights, we will certainly respect that; as
> I've said, many Debian developers are also software authors themselves,
> so it certainly shouldn't be said that we don't recognize the value of
> our upstreams' efforts.

Of course, the maintainer would very likely have been willing to put a
more appropriately-sized notice in the program, and it would still be
distributed by Debian so long as it wasn't a requirement.  After all,
maintainers can be reasonably expected to abide by upstream's wishes
(within reason), even wishes that don't have the force of a requirement.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 03:53:17PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> Note that reiserfsprogs-3.6.4-4.diff has in fact not moved the credits
> to another file, but *removed them entirely*.  The sponsors of the
> program are not mentioned at all in the Debian package.  This is
> unconscionable.

You seem to be equating author credits with sponsorship credits, as if
removing sponsorship credits is on a level with, say, removing copyright
notices and the author's name.  Removing the name of the person who paid
for a program to be written is not the same as removing the name of the
person who wrote it.[1]

(Hans goes further, and claims that Debian is taking credit for the
tools, which is, as far as I can tell, a simple lie.)

[1] perhaps this is not the case legally--certainly not if he had
assigned copyright to a sponsor--but we're speaking of morals, not law

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 07:54:26AM +0200, Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder 
wrote:
> Well, doesn't the GPL say something on it being illegal to impose additional 
> restrictions on distribution?

If the restriction is agreed upon by all copyright holders, then the issue
is murky; as far as I know, there's no consensus on this issue on debian-
legal.  (I believe Branden Robinson claims that any such additional
restrictions render the license internally inconsistent, such that it's
impossible to satisfy, but not everyone agrees.)

I don't know of any software in Debian or non-free that is licensed
under the GPL with additional restrictions (except, perhaps, this one).
If you know of any, it might be worth bringing up on d-legal.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Lars Bahner]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 01:19:17AM -0400, Michael Tindal wrote:

> Prominently does not necessarily imply causing the program to be
> unusable.  A one line message stating "This program was funded my
> multiple sources; see the file CREDITS" would suffice.
> 
> > Debian should not stomp all over the author's intentions if it is
> > reasonably avoidable.  The alternatives do not seem to have been
> > adequately explored.

Maybe someone with a little knowledge of C could add a -q --quiet 
parameter to the debian source?

Then the default behaviour would be to honour Hans Reiser's wishes
to the full extent. People needing to have a quiet run (from scripts
or whatever could deliberately suppress the messages.

Using the -q switch implies that you know the contents of the 
accreditation, but do not wish your scripts to be let in on the
secret as well.

Unfortuneately I do not program C.

Cheers,
-- 
Lars Bahner: http://lars.bahner.com/; Voice: +4792884492; Fax: +4792974492


Key fingerprint = A913 7B54 E5FC 804D C12B  18DE 493D 83DE 5DE6 C5D6

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin Pool]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 02:09:39 -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 01:19:17AM -0400, Michael Tindal wrote:
>> I do not understand your accusations here.  No one stated what you
>> said, and no one has delibaretly attempted to upset Hans.  Quite the
>> contrary, actually.  I have seen _several_ people attempting to find a
>> compromise,
> 
> Indeed.  I don't know where Martin is getting that from; he certainly
> didn't provide any citations.  People on the Debian side have been
> extremely reasonable (at least when talking to Hans; not when talking
> to, say, Ben Collins ...)

For example, at least two people called Hans a troll.  An upstream author
expressing concern about the way their code is packaged is not trolling
(i.e. making random arguments just to provoke flames.)

I'm glad to see people are trying to find a compromise.  I'm sure one is
possible with some goodwill.

Perhaps Ed or Hans can post more history if it can't be resolved offline.

-- 
Martin

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 08:58:05AM +0200, Lars Bahner wrote:
> Maybe someone with a little knowledge of C could add a -q --quiet 
> parameter to the debian source?

This doesn't help the more major problems that have been raised
(licensing and DFSG-freeness) at all.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 04:59:59PM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> For example, at least two people called Hans a troll.  An upstream author
> expressing concern about the way their code is packaged is not trolling
> (i.e. making random arguments just to provoke flames.)

He went from accusing Debian of plagiarism (a severe accusation made with no
backing) to to making statements about the GFDL issue in the same thread,
with no apparent segue.  This post is the one that I'd call trolling:

"As far as I am concerned, I have no desire to have ReiserFS distributed
 for free by anyone who removes the GNU manifesto or similar expressions
 from Stallman's work (or my own) and redistributes it.  It is simply a
 matter of respect that is due the author."

It goes without saying that Debian has not and has no intention of removing
the GNU Manifesto from GNU manuals.  He's just provoking argument, and
that's what "trolling" means.

Note also that he seems to be making no effort to resolve the issue he
raised.

> I'm glad to see people are trying to find a compromise.  I'm sure one is
> possible with some goodwill.

I havn't seen evidence that Hans cares to find a compromise.  If he and
the package maintainer have taken this off the list, then one or the
other needs to say so; as is, I just see a large flamewar that has no
chance of resolving anything, due to it having no focus and far too many
unanswered questions.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS]

Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> > Well, doesn't the GPL say something on it being illegal to impose 
> > additional 
> > restrictions on distribution?
> 
> If the restriction is agreed upon by all copyright holders, then the issue
> is murky; as far as I know, there's no consensus on this issue on debian-
> legal.  (I believe Branden Robinson claims that any such additional
> restrictions render the license internally inconsistent, such that it's
> impossible to satisfy, but not everyone agrees.)

That's not what I remember.

If the copyright holder includes a copy of the GPL but writes that the
software is licensed under the GPL plus additional restrictions, then
this is not "illegal" as far as I know (there's nothing in the GPL
that prevents it from being used in this way). Of course, the
resulting licence is not compatibile with the GPL, so if the program
were linked with other GPL software Debian could not distribute it.

If the copyright holder in one places writes that the software is GPL,
but in another place adds restrictions, then that would be
inconsistent.

> I don't know of any software in Debian or non-free that is licensed
> under the GPL with additional restrictions (except, perhaps, this one).
> If you know of any, it might be worth bringing up on d-legal.

I vaguely remember cases of people including the GPL but then writing
some additional text that seemed to be either an incorrect
clarification or an additional restriction. If I remember correctly,
these people subsequently relented when they realised that they were
making their licence either inconsistent or GPL-incompatible.

I hope that reiserfsprogs will remain GPL. If the only way to persuade
Hans Reiser to keep the program GPL is for Debian not to remove the
verbage, then I would be willing to make that compromise (but I'm not
a Debian developer).

Edmund

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Jan Niehusmann]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 06:19:28PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> Remember, the issue here isn't whether there's good reason to remove the
> Reiser message, but whether we're allowed to (apparently not) and
> whether not being allowed to do so is DFSG-free.  Even if we were happy
> with simply putting it back in, it still can't go in main if it's not free.

Are you sure about that? I didn't read all the messages in this thread,
but from the ones I read, I get the impression that Hans is not trying
to say that debian does something illegal. I read phrases like rude,
impolite, and ingrateful, but not illegal. He did talk about 'violation
of copyright' in his first mail, but reading his second mail, I'm quite
sure he doesn't really care about legal positions, but about fairness.

I think debian should respect the authors' wishes, even if we would be
allowed not to do so. This is not about DFSG-freeness, it's just nice
behaviour.

And of course, now that the topic is being discussed, it's of course ok
to ask Hans if the messages can be turned of under certain
circumstances, if that improves the usefulness of the software to the
users.

Jan

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Lars Bahner]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 03:19:56AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 08:58:05AM +0200, Lars Bahner wrote:
> > Maybe someone with a little knowledge of C could add a -q --quiet 
> > parameter to the debian source?
> 
> This doesn't help the more major problems that have been raised
> (licensing and DFSG-freeness) at all.

Agreed, but it might stop aggravation until we solve the more general
DFSG-issues.

-- 
Lars Bahner: http://lars.bahner.com/; Voice: +4792884492; Fax: +4792974492


Key fingerprint = A913 7B54 E5FC 804D C12B  18DE 493D 83DE 5DE6 C5D6

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 10:43:44AM +0200, Jan Niehusmann wrote:
> Are you sure about that? I didn't read all the messages in this thread,

I'm not sure about anything, as Hans hasn't clarified what he's complaining
about.

> I think debian should respect the authors' wishes, even if we would be
> allowed not to do so. This is not about DFSG-freeness, it's just nice
> behaviour.

We're all in agreement here.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Anthony Towns]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 02:51:11AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> You seem to be equating author credits with sponsorship credits, as if
> removing sponsorship credits is on a level with, say, removing copyright
> notices and the author's name.  

Who says it isn't? If you want to dedicate a program you wrote to
someone who inspired you to write it, or who came up with some of the
ideas that you put in there, why shouldn't you associate their names
with the program just as much as yours? Likewise if someone supplied
your bread and water while you were off doing the writing?

Hans obviously feels the contributions his sponsors played in getting
reiserfs written and maintained was very important. Why do you think
you know better?

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

  ``Dear Anthony Towns: [...] Congratulations -- 
you are now certified as a Red Hat Certified Engineer!''


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[John Hasler]

Eric Schwartz writes:
> Except in extreme cases, we don't overrule a package maintainer's
> decision to package the software he maintains however he likes.  I don't
> see any indication he has tried unsuccessfully to air his concerns with
> the maintainer

I think this is because like most people he does not understand how
decentralized Debian is.  There seems to be a widespread belief that
packages are added to Debian at the direction of a central authority.
-- 
John Hasler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[John Hasler]

Adrian writes:
> Well, doesn't the GPL say something on it being illegal to impose
> additional restrictions on distribution?

Original authors can add external restrictions, though the result is
generally incompatible with other GPL software.
-- 
John Hasler
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Craig Dickson]

David Nusinow wrote:

> Honestly, how bad is removing this message? Is removing this really
> plagiarism? No, as credits will be given as due in the credits file.

Right. Plagiarism would be replacing the credits with other credits,
claiming to have written someone else's work. That word has no relevance
whatsoever to this situation. Nobody's trying to take credit for
Reiser's work.

> Is
> this bowlderization? Bowdler is a man who took Shakespeare and re-wrote
> it to remove the sexual bits, trying to sterilize it. Somehow, I don't
> think that's what's happening here in any fashion.

Right again. Bowdlerization would be if we went through Reiser's code
taking out all the sexual innuendos in the comments and variable names.
Or maybe just changing all his recursions to loops in a fit of C-bigot
anti-functional-programming mania. Has anyone done this? Of course not.
Once again, the word has no relevance to this situation.

> Is Hans' art as a
> programmer really hanging on this piece of code? It's not like this
> affects the ability of the program to function properly, and in fact
> probably makes it function better in more cases. So it's not like this
> move is hurting anyone's reputation.

Of course not. Reiser is hurting his own reputation with infantile,
irrational behavior like these accusations more than anyone could hurt
him by trying to "plagiarise" or "bowdlerize" his work.

Craig


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Craig Dickson]

Martin Pool wrote:

> For example, at least two people called Hans a troll.  An upstream author
> expressing concern about the way their code is packaged is not trolling
> (i.e. making random arguments just to provoke flames.)

Considering that Reiser waved his arms frantically but said nothing of
substance, accused people of plagiarism and bowdlerizing without saying
exactly what they did (and he STILL hasn't said!), I think the
accusation of trolling holds up quite well.

> I'm glad to see people are trying to find a compromise.  I'm sure one is
> possible with some goodwill.

You may be giving Reiser too much credit there, but we'll see...

Craig


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