Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Domenico Andreoli]

hi Hans,

  we have bad news for your filesystems :(( it happens that some sections
of the license are not compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines [0].

Even more grave is that something makes them also not suited for debian's
non-free archive.

I'm sorry but if thing do not get fixed, this stuff won't ship with
next distribution release.

Here follows the message posted to debian-legal mailing list which
starts the thread.

cheers
domenico

[0] http://www.debian.org/social_contract

----- Forwarded message from Sami Liedes <sliedes@cc.hut.fi> -----

Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 14:40:13 +0300
From: Sami Liedes <sliedes@cc.hut.fi>
To: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
Cc: ed@debian.org, cavok@debian.org
Subject: reiser4 non-free?

[Cc:'d to the reiser4progs maintainers. Please Cc: me when replying,
I'm not subscribed to -legal.]

There has previously been discussion at least in April 2003 on this
list about the freeness of reiserfs.

It seems a further "clarification" has been added to the license (GPL
+ clarifications) in both reiser4progs and kernel-patch-2.6-reiser4
since then. This is the section that has been modified:

> Finally, nothing in this license shall be interpreted to allow you to
> fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my credits such as by creating
> a front end that hides my credits from the user or renaming mkreiser4
> to mkyourcompanyfs or even just make_filesystem, without my
> permission, unless you are an end user not redistributing to others.
> If you have doubts about how to properly do that, or about what is
> fair, ask.  (Last I spoke with him Richard was contemplating how best
> to address the fair crediting issue in the next GPL version.)

New here is the "such as by creating a front end that hides [...] or
even just make_filesystem". The controversy last year was created by
mkreiserfs printing an overly verbose (tens of lines of sponsor
credits and other non-licensing information) advertisement when
running from the command line and Mr. Reiser's assertion that removing
it violates the GPL.

To me, these new "clarifications" seem non-free. (IANADD, and I
believe the other IANA* goes without saying. :-)

Another section has been added after the above one:

> Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
> system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
> interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
> considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
> choice.

Surely a license cannot add anything to the set of derived works (if
the other work is not derived, the license obviously doesn't apply to
it and hence never gets to say it is derived; if it is, it is even
without the license saying so). However I believe -legal has not
considered text like this a problem before (I might be wrong though).

	Sami

----- End forwarded message -----


-----[ Domenico Andreoli, aka cavok
 --[ http://people.debian.org/~cavok/gpgkey.asc
   ---[ 3A0F 2F80 F79C 678A 8936  4FEE 0677 9033 A20E BC50

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 09:32:46PM +0200, Domenico Andreoli wrote:
>   we have bad news for your filesystems :(( it happens that some sections
> of the license are not compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines [0].

Who is Domenico Andreoli? I have not noticed them as a debian-legal
summariser before. Who asked for this to be summarised and sent upstream so
soon?

-- 
MJR/slef

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Someone posted the following on slashdot, presumably a debian someone:

    Nobody's saying that your proprietary hardware will cease to work in
    Debian. The packages will still exist; they'll just be in the
    "non-free" section, separated out so that people who don't want any
    non-free software can omit that section from their sources.list
    file. Non-free packages are technically not part of Debian, but if
    you have a non-free line in your sources.list, there's no difference
    whatsoever in how you use them.

So hopefully, Debian can print out some nice warning that Reiser4 is not 
plagiarizable, and if the user indicates that they still want to use it 
anyway, they can go forward.

I find Debian's aggressive behavior toward myself, and especially 
Richard Stallman and his GFDL, to be inappropriate and ungrateful, but I 
also understand that Debian is striving to define its morality, and that 
much of the world shares its rather asian attitude towards whether it is 
acceptable to not credit others for their contributions to science. I do 
not. I think the western approach of rigor in attribution has been of 
great value in stimulating innovation over the centuries, and think it 
should be applied to free software as much as it was to free science 
research.

I don't expect to convince Debian of this, especially not after your 
vote that you recently had, but it would be pleasant if users who don't 
mind attribution are able to select reiser4 if they want it.

Hans



Domenico Andreoli wrote:

>hi Hans,
>
>  we have bad news for your filesystems :(( it happens that some sections
>of the license are not compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines [0].
>
>Even more grave is that something makes them also not suited for debian's
>non-free archive.
>
>I'm sorry but if thing do not get fixed, this stuff won't ship with
>next distribution release.
>
>Here follows the message posted to debian-legal mailing list which
>starts the thread.
>
>cheers
>domenico
>
>[0] http://www.debian.org/social_contract
>
>----- Forwarded message from Sami Liedes <sliedes@cc.hut.fi> -----
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 14:40:13 +0300
>From: Sami Liedes <sliedes@cc.hut.fi>
>To: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
>Cc: ed@debian.org, cavok@debian.org
>Subject: reiser4 non-free?
>
>[Cc:'d to the reiser4progs maintainers. Please Cc: me when replying,
>I'm not subscribed to -legal.]
>
>There has previously been discussion at least in April 2003 on this
>list about the freeness of reiserfs.
>
>It seems a further "clarification" has been added to the license (GPL
>+ clarifications) in both reiser4progs and kernel-patch-2.6-reiser4
>since then. This is the section that has been modified:
>
>  
>
>>Finally, nothing in this license shall be interpreted to allow you to
>>fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my credits such as by creating
>>a front end that hides my credits from the user or renaming mkreiser4
>>to mkyourcompanyfs or even just make_filesystem, without my
>>permission, unless you are an end user not redistributing to others.
>>If you have doubts about how to properly do that, or about what is
>>fair, ask.  (Last I spoke with him Richard was contemplating how best
>>to address the fair crediting issue in the next GPL version.)
>>    
>>
>
>New here is the "such as by creating a front end that hides [...] or
>even just make_filesystem". The controversy last year was created by
>mkreiserfs printing an overly verbose (tens of lines of sponsor
>credits and other non-licensing information) advertisement when
>running from the command line and Mr. Reiser's assertion that removing
>it violates the GPL.
>
>To me, these new "clarifications" seem non-free. (IANADD, and I
>believe the other IANA* goes without saying. :-)
>
>Another section has been added after the above one:
>
>  
>
>>Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
>>system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
>>interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
>>considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
>>choice.
>>    
>>
>
>Surely a license cannot add anything to the set of derived works (if
>the other work is not derived, the license obviously doesn't apply to
>it and hence never gets to say it is derived; if it is, it is even
>without the license saying so). However I believe -legal has not
>considered text like this a problem before (I might be wrong though).
>
>	Sami
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>-----[ Domenico Andreoli, aka cavok
> --[ http://people.debian.org/~cavok/gpgkey.asc
>   ---[ 3A0F 2F80 F79C 678A 8936  4FEE 0677 9033 A20E BC50
>
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Don Armstrong]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> So hopefully, Debian can print out some nice warning that Reiser4 is
> not plagiarizable, and if the user indicates that they still want to
> use it anyway, they can go forward.

We have to ascertain as well that we can even legally distribute
it. Assuming reiser4 is not a derivative work of any other GPLed code,
there shouldn't be a problem with it in non-free, but if it is, we
cannot distribute it at all, as the extra clarifications clearly are
not GPL compatible.

> I find Debian's aggressive behavior toward myself, and especially
> Richard Stallman and his GFDL, to be inappropriate and ungrateful,

Just to clarify, what you are seeing is individuals who may (or may
not) be associated with the Debian project, not Debian itself. [This
is no less different than conflating yourself with the University of
Erlangen-Nürnberg or Richard with the FSF.]

> I also understand that Debian is striving to define its morality,
> and that much of the world shares its rather asian attitude towards
> whether it is acceptable to not credit others for their
> contributions to science. I do not. I think the western approach of
> rigor in attribution has been of great value in stimulating
> innovation over the centuries, and think it should be applied to
> free software as much as it was to free science research.

I don't think anyone involved in Debian or in the larger Debian
community feels that you or Richard, or any other contributor to the
Free Software movement should fail to be properly recognized for their
voluminous contributions to the movement.

What I, and others who also have contributed to this movement object
to is the abridging of freedoms to attain the secondary goal of
rigorous attribution.

I know in my own scientific work I expect that people who use the
ideas that come from my work to cite and refer to the work which
spawned their ideas in an appropriate manner. However, I am loth to
define exactly how they refer to my work, as this can be as stifling
to their ability to build upon my work as me failing to publish or
communicate it.

Rest assured that many of us are practitioners of rigorous attribution
and would not fail to attribute someone appropriately. However, we are
also well aware that the nature of attribution changes from medium to
medium, and that a form of attribution rigorously defined by license
would necessarily interfere with the ability of the end user to modify
the work in ways that are traditionally embraced by the Free Software
community at large.

As always, if I can assist you in finding a method to bring your
wishes in harmony with the DFSG and Debian, please don't hesitate to
let me know.


Don Armstrong

-- 
If you wish to strive for peace of soul, then believe; if you wish to
be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
 -- Friedrich Nietzsche

http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Stewart Smith]

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On Sun, 2004-04-25 at 05:32, Domenico Andreoli wrote:
> > Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
> > system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
> > interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
> > considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
> > choice.
> 
> Surely a license cannot add anything to the set of derived works (if
> the other work is not derived, the license obviously doesn't apply to
> it and hence never gets to say it is derived; if it is, it is even
> without the license saying so). However I believe -legal has not
> considered text like this a problem before (I might be wrong though).

It doesn't "add", it clarifies. i.e. if you build a clustered file
system that does stuff specific to reiserfs (e.g. use the reiser4
syscall), then that will be considered a derived work, and must be
distributable under the GPL.

Sure, you could go to court and argue that it isn't - but namesys have a
clear clarification of what they consider, so I hope your lawyer is good
:)

Think of it in the same light as the clarification in the kernel's copy
of the GPL saying that userspace programs aren't derived. except here
it's the other way around.
-- 
Stewart Smith (stewart@flamingspork.com)
http://www.flamingspork.com/


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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Don Armstrong wrote:

>On Thu, 29 Apr 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>So hopefully, Debian can print out some nice warning that Reiser4 is
>>not plagiarizable, and if the user indicates that they still want to
>>use it anyway, they can go forward.
>>    
>>
>
>We have to ascertain as well that we can even legally distribute
>it. Assuming reiser4 is not a derivative work of any other GPLed code,
>there shouldn't be a problem with it in non-free, but if it is, we
>cannot distribute it at all, as the extra clarifications clearly are
>not GPL compatible.
>
>  
>
>>I find Debian's aggressive behavior toward myself, and especially
>>Richard Stallman and his GFDL, to be inappropriate and ungrateful,
>>    
>>
>
>Just to clarify, what you are seeing is individuals who may (or may
>not) be associated with the Debian project, not Debian itself. [This
>is no less different than conflating yourself with the University of
>Erlangen-Nürnberg or Richard with the FSF.]
>  
>
Putting Stallman's (or FSF's) work in the non-free section of your 
distribution is the lack of respect and gratitude that I speak of.

>  
>
>>I also understand that Debian is striving to define its morality,
>>and that much of the world shares its rather asian attitude towards
>>whether it is acceptable to not credit others for their
>>contributions to science. I do not. I think the western approach of
>>rigor in attribution has been of great value in stimulating
>>innovation over the centuries, and think it should be applied to
>>free software as much as it was to free science research.
>>    
>>
>
>I don't think anyone involved in Debian or in the larger Debian
>community feels that you or Richard, or any other contributor to the
>Free Software movement should fail to be properly recognized for their
>voluminous contributions to the movement.
>
>What I, and others who also have contributed to this movement object
>to is the abridging of freedoms to attain the secondary goal of
>rigorous attribution.
>
>I know in my own scientific work I expect that people who use the
>ideas that come from my work to cite and refer to the work which
>spawned their ideas in an appropriate manner.
>
This happens due to peer reviewed journals in science.  In free software 
there is no such social mechanism affecting RedHat and preventing them 
from removing the k from all the kde programs.  In fact there is a 
tradition among marketeers to debrand all inclusions into a product 
which is the exact opposite of fairly attribute, and they act in 
accordance with that tradition.  This is a real problem.

> However, I am loth to
>define exactly how they refer to my work, as this can be as stifling
>to their ability to build upon my work as me failing to publish or
>communicate it.
>
>Rest assured that many of us are practitioners of rigorous attribution
>and would not fail to attribute someone appropriately.
>
Uh no, you already did, you removed the credits from ReiserFS (none of 
which are credits for me, please keep that in mind, I do not take this 
stand for my personal benefit, my name is on the filesystem and that is 
more than enough credit for me).

> However, we are
>also well aware that the nature of attribution changes from medium to
>medium, and that a form of attribution rigorously defined by license
>would necessarily interfere with the ability of the end user to modify
>the work in ways that are traditionally embraced by the Free Software
>community at large.
>  
>
What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?  None.  
There is no alternative actually.  Also, the end user is not the issue, 
I think the current phrasing even defines that the end user can remove them.

>As always, if I can assist you in finding a method to bring your
>wishes in harmony with the DFSG and Debian, please don't hesitate to
>let me know.
>
>
>Don Armstrong
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

I just want to add that I am very grateful to Domenico for the work he 
has done in trying to aid integration.

It is a pity that Debian and Suse historically silently cut the 
attributions (this was before Domenico got involved with us) rather than 
engaging us in a dialogue about them first, thus inspiring the current 
license.  Once it was brought to our attention, we did reduce the size 
of the credits by using a random credit program instead of exhaustively 
crediting everyone.  If I didn't see what RedHat was doing to KDE, and 
didn't see cutting of developer credits as a growing trend among 
distros, we probably would not be moving to an anti-plagiarism 
license.   You the distros created the need for less free licensing by 
your behavior, frankly.

Hans

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-04-30 13:02:19 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> It is a pity that Debian and Suse historically silently cut the 
> attributions 

I think you will find that Debian would leave the copyright 
attribution notices, warranty disclaimer and statement of licence. 
Doing otherwise is a bug and can be dealt with simply.

Sadly, your "invariant section"-inspired changes to the GPL cause 
other problems, which seem similar to combining an ad-clause licence 
with the GPL.

> [...] rather than engaging us in a 
> dialogue about them first, thus inspiring the current license.

Maybe it could have been handled better, but you didn't seem to engage 
in a dialogue on the banner removal before publicly accusing debian of 
intentional plagiarism, so it's not entirely a debian communication 
failure.

> [...] You the distros created the need for less free 
> licensing by your behavior, frankly.

There is no need for less free licensing.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Jeremy Hankins]

Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:

> What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?
> None.  There is no alternative actually.

Exactly: we offer no alternative.  This is not a disagreement about
which method of ensuring attribution is correct and acceptable, but a
disagreement about whether or not it is appropriate to force attribution
according to some particular standard.

It is entirely within your rights as copyright holder to push whatever
social agenda you wish with your software license -- but debian-legal's
position is that that will make the license non-free.  If you wish to
require that it not be used in nuclear facilities, fine: non-free.  If
you require that people who use the software spend a moment to think
about the plight of the homeless, fine: non-free.  Just as, when you
require attribution in a particular format and with a particular text,
that's fine, but non-free.

Though it may not be obvious given the rhetoric surrounding the issue,
this is at its heart about pragmatism and compromise.  In a free society
we allow others freedoms that we sincerely hope they will not avail
themselves of.  But we allow it, because people disagree, and
disagreement is (or can be, at least) good and productive.  We prefer to
use arguments rather than force (whether legal or physical) to get our
points across, because in doing so we improve everyones understanding of
the issues (including our own).

If we disagree on the above paragraph, we disagree on fundamental
principles.  If, however, you agree there (though perhaps not with the
rest) please explain where you think the disagreement shows up, because
we may be able to make sense of things.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Scott James Remnant]

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On Fri, 2004-04-30 at 04:48 -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

> Putting Stallman's (or FSF's) work in the non-free section of your 
> distribution is the lack of respect and gratitude that I speak of.
> 
No, that would be nothing to do with respect or gratitude; but a simple
licence problem.  We require that the licences of all software in our
main distribution meet certain standards of freedom, the GFDL at this
time sadly doesn't.

It's nothing personal; we fully respect Richard's wishes to prevent
modification of important GNU philosophy and licence his documentation
to ensure this.

We respect him. so are obeying his wishes in the only way our Social
Contract allows us to do ... rather than disobeying his wishes.

Likewise I'm sure most of us respect your wish to prevent the removal of
your attributes, and we will obey those wishes in the only way our
Social Contract allows us to do.

Scott
-- 
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen?  Are you going round the twist?

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?
>>None.  There is no alternative actually.
> 
> 
> Exactly: we offer no alternative.  This is not a disagreement about
> which method of ensuring attribution is correct and acceptable, but a
> disagreement about whether or not it is appropriate to force attribution
> according to some particular standard.
> 
> It is entirely within your rights as copyright holder to push whatever
> social agenda you wish with your software license -- but debian-legal's
> position is that that will make the license non-free.  If you wish to
> require that it not be used in nuclear facilities, fine: non-free.  If
> you require that people who use the software spend a moment to think
> about the plight of the homeless, fine: non-free.  Just as, when you
> require attribution in a particular format and with a particular text,
> that's fine, but non-free.

Did you say this as an official debian spokesperson?


Carl-Daniel

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Michael Milverton]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3638 bytes --]

Is this the licencing in question?

###
Finally, nothing in this license shall be interpreted to allow you to
fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my credits such as by creating
a front end that hides my credits from the user or renaming mkreiser4
to mkyourcompanyfs or even just make_filesystem, without my
permission, unless you are an end user not redistributing to others.
If you have doubts about how to properly do that, or about what is
fair, ask.  (Last I spoke with him Richard was contemplating how best
to address the fair crediting issue in the next GPL version.)

Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
choice.
###

I read this as meaning the following. Nobody is allowed to take the product 
that we produce and rename it into something else, thereby making it look as 
though it really belongs to someone else. 

The way I read the GPL is that it is essentially giving you the freedom to 
copy change and modify the code as long you pass this freedom along.

I do not see how the addition of this request for not altering the product 
name by renaming it something else is in contradiction with the GPL. The way 
I read the GPL, it would still be possible to create a new program that 
contained reiser4 code and call it something else as long as the code was 
free. All it appears that is being asked is to not change the name of the 
product itself. This is the moral and right thing to do. The GPL licence also 
makes its intent and purpose clear in the following statement

##
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your 
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the 
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on 
the Program. 
##

Nothing in what Hans has requested would restrict the distribution of 
derivative or collective works based on the program. This is what the GPL is 
in essence trying to exercise control over eg to distribute derivative or 
collective works. As it states it does not have the intention to claim rights 
or contest the rights of the person/people who wrote the program. I would 
seem to think that if you strip credits and rename the actual product itself, 
eg NOT a derivitave work then you are taking the rights away from the person 
who wrote it.

Anyway apart from the technical aspect I believe there is a more fundamental 
issue that should not be swept under the carpet and this is that it is clear 
that people are prepared to essentially exploit the hardwork of other people 
and it is these people who are going against the spirit of the GPL. What is 
the point of having the code copyrighted to Hans Reiser in the source code 
when all the end user gets to see is that this software is called company X.

I think people need to be more sensitive to the feelings of people that put 
such a huge amount of heart and soul into their software and not be so quick 
in dismissing their concerns. If people do not feel heard and do not feel 
that their contribution is essentially meaningful then it takes away one of 
the biggest motivations for releasing their hard work as Free Software.


Thankyou
And by the way if I could spell I would have spelt it right in the first 
place.

Thankyou
Michael Milverton

-- 
GNU/Linux: Secure, Stable, Free
Michael <camel78@iprimus.com.au>

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:

>
>>  Just as, when you
>>require attribution in a particular format and with a particular text,
>>that's fine, but non-free.
>>    
>>
Actually, I would be happy to use language not requiring a particular 
format but requiring it to be equally prominent and extensive for all 
persons credited at the end of any changes to it.

Hmm, I should change the anti-plagiarism license accordingly, as that 
makes sense.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Michael, you are much more eloquent than I am.  Thanks for understanding.

Hans

Michael Milverton wrote:

>Is this the licencing in question?
>
>###
>Finally, nothing in this license shall be interpreted to allow you to
>fail to fairly credit me, or to remove my credits such as by creating
>a front end that hides my credits from the user or renaming mkreiser4
>to mkyourcompanyfs or even just make_filesystem, without my
>permission, unless you are an end user not redistributing to others.
>If you have doubts about how to properly do that, or about what is
>fair, ask.  (Last I spoke with him Richard was contemplating how best
>to address the fair crediting issue in the next GPL version.)
>
>Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
>system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
>interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
>considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
>choice.
>###
>
>I read this as meaning the following. Nobody is allowed to take the product 
>that we produce and rename it into something else, thereby making it look as 
>though it really belongs to someone else. 
>
>The way I read the GPL is that it is essentially giving you the freedom to 
>copy change and modify the code as long you pass this freedom along.
>
>I do not see how the addition of this request for not altering the product 
>name by renaming it something else is in contradiction with the GPL. The way 
>I read the GPL, it would still be possible to create a new program that 
>contained reiser4 code and call it something else as long as the code was 
>free. All it appears that is being asked is to not change the name of the 
>product itself. This is the moral and right thing to do. The GPL licence also 
>makes its intent and purpose clear in the following statement
>
>##
>Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your 
>rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the 
>right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on 
>the Program. 
>##
>
>Nothing in what Hans has requested would restrict the distribution of 
>derivative or collective works based on the program. This is what the GPL is 
>in essence trying to exercise control over eg to distribute derivative or 
>collective works. As it states it does not have the intention to claim rights 
>or contest the rights of the person/people who wrote the program. I would 
>seem to think that if you strip credits and rename the actual product itself, 
>eg NOT a derivitave work then you are taking the rights away from the person 
>who wrote it.
>
>Anyway apart from the technical aspect I believe there is a more fundamental 
>issue that should not be swept under the carpet and this is that it is clear 
>that people are prepared to essentially exploit the hardwork of other people 
>and it is these people who are going against the spirit of the GPL. What is 
>the point of having the code copyrighted to Hans Reiser in the source code 
>when all the end user gets to see is that this software is called company X.
>
>I think people need to be more sensitive to the feelings of people that put 
>such a huge amount of heart and soul into their software and not be so quick 
>in dismissing their concerns. If people do not feel heard and do not feel 
>that their contribution is essentially meaningful then it takes away one of 
>the biggest motivations for releasing their hard work as Free Software.
>
>
>Thankyou
>And by the way if I could spell I would have spelt it right in the first 
>place.
>
>Thankyou
>Michael Milverton
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-04-30 17:26:50 +0100 Michael Milverton 
<camel78@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

> I read this as meaning the following. Nobody is allowed to take the 
> product 
> that we produce and rename it into something else, thereby making it 
> look as 
> though it really belongs to someone else.

You just ignored the bit where he forbids supression of the "credits" 
banner? Although you might be able to argue for some form of this, it 
is clearly more restrictive than what is written in the GPL.

> and it is these people who are going against the spirit of the GPL. 
> What is 
> the point of having the code copyrighted to Hans Reiser in the source 
> code 
> when all the end user gets to see is that this software is called 
> company X.

It's a problem of degrees. Reasonable attribution is fine, but if 
every command run in boot scrips output a screen of credits, just the 
scrolling display would add considerably to the time and go past too 
quick for anyone to read anything, for example. What is the point of 
having the program attributed to Hans Reiser when all the end user 
gets to see is a blur, or becomes used to skipping these messages?

> I think people need to be more sensitive to the feelings of people 
> that put 
> such a huge amount of heart and soul into their software and not be 
> so quick 
> in dismissing their concerns. [...]

I agree with this. I think the same consideration should be given to 
the debian developers. This whole feud seems to have started because a 
debian package maintainer responded to a bug report from a debian user 
and then they were accused of plagiarism in a confrontational 
response. Not really a sinister plot to steal Hans Reiser's work.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Jeremy Hankins]

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.kernel.2004@gmx.net> writes:
> Jeremy Hankins wrote:

>> Exactly: we offer no alternative.  This is not a disagreement about
>> which method of ensuring attribution is correct and acceptable, but a
>> disagreement about whether or not it is appropriate to force
>> attribution according to some particular standard.
>> 
>> It is entirely within your rights as copyright holder to push
>> whatever social agenda you wish with your software license -- but
>> debian-legal's position is that that will make the license non-free.
>> If you wish to require that it not be used in nuclear facilities,
>> fine: non-free.  If you require that people who use the software
>> spend a moment to think about the plight of the homeless, fine:
>> non-free.  Just as, when you require attribution in a particular
>> format and with a particular text, that's fine, but non-free.
>
> Did you say this as an official debian spokesperson?

Certainly not.  On the other hand, official debian spokespersons are
rather uncommon beasts, and generally unnecessary.  This is, however, my
perception (based on my years participating on the list) of the
consensus on debian-legal, and I'd be quite surprised if folks on d-l
disagreed.

Maybe you could explain what you would want an official statement for?
Most likely, whatever it is, we can find a way to achieve it.  Like many
groups, especially in the free software world, Debian has its own
structures and ways of getting things done.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


| It is entirely within your rights as copyright holder to push whatever
| social agenda you wish with your software license -- but debian-legal's
| position is that that will make the license non-free.  If you wish to
| require that it not be used in nuclear facilities, fine: non-free.  If
| you require that people who use the software spend a moment to think
| about the plight of the homeless, fine: non-free.  Just as, when you
| require attribution in a particular format and with a particular text,
| that's fine, but non-free.

This seems entirely too black-and-white to me.  If a license for
commercial software requires me to purchase a copy of it and only run
one copy at a time, on one machine at a time, that's acceptable to me.
I would prefer that the license allow me to pirate at will, of course,
or that the source all be there and the license allows me to fork it.

Similarly, I am not willing to accept a license which requires me to
allow the company publishing the software to automatically update it at
any time, and to pretty much do whatever they want to my machine with no
liability.  I am also not willing to accept a license which requires me
to license all works produced by the software to them.

Basically, by having "free" and "non-free", you lump everything together
into "free" as in absolutely, strictly, lilly-white, no-strings-attached
freedom, while "non-free" covers everything from reiser (free, as above,
with the restriction that there must be attribution) to microsoft (you
pay a huge license fee and basically sign away your soul).

Even if you don't think Microsoft is as evil as that, I still think it
would be a personal insult to Hans and everyone involved if anyone
called them a huge, faceless corporation.

I use Gentoo, personally, but one of my favorite things about debian is
that I can choose a level of stability -- from "stable but 5-10 years
old" to "this WILL break your computer", _including_ things in between
such as "don't trust your life savings to it, but we've never seen it
break" and "this is slightly bleeding-edge, but people have gotten it to
work".  I think there should be a similar option with licenses -- from
"free" to "microsoft", including things in between such as djb or reiser
style licenses.

Right now, there's only "free" and "non-free".  If I am human and sane,
my _only_ choice is probably "non-free" anyway.

If this has already been discussed, please point me to some archive to
read about it.
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

MJ Ray wrote:

> On 2004-04-30 17:26:50 +0100 Michael Milverton 
> <camel78@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
>
>> I read this as meaning the following. Nobody is allowed to take the 
>> product that we produce and rename it into something else, thereby 
>> making it look as though it really belongs to someone else.
>
>
> You just ignored the bit where he forbids supression of the "credits" 
> banner?

I am flexible on the phrasing of this, and can allow some phrasing such 
as credits must be kept equally prominent and extensive.

> Although you might be able to argue for some form of this, it is 
> clearly more restrictive than what is written in the GPL.
>
>> and it is these people who are going against the spirit of the GPL. 
>> What is the point of having the code copyrighted to Hans Reiser in 
>> the source code when all the end user gets to see is that this 
>> software is called company X.
>
>
> It's a problem of degrees. Reasonable attribution is fine, but if 
> every command run in boot scrips output a screen of credits, just the 
> scrolling display would add considerably to the time and go past too 
> quick for anyone to read anything, for example. What is the point of 
> having the program attributed to Hans Reiser when all the end user 
> gets to see is a blur, or becomes used to skipping these messages?
>
>> I think people need to be more sensitive to the feelings of people 
>> that put such a huge amount of heart and soul into their software and 
>> not be so quick in dismissing their concerns. [...]
>
>
> I agree with this. I think the same consideration should be given to 
> the debian developers. This whole feud seems to have started because a 
> debian package maintainer responded to a bug report

Said maintainer added a bug in the process of removing credits, and thus 
we found out the credits were removed.  Your phrasing was not a good 
description

> from a debian user and then they were accused of plagiarism in a 
> confrontational response. Not really a sinister plot to steal Hans 
> Reiser's work.
>
But others out there ARE willing to do so, look at RedHat and KDE.... or 
consider various startups I know of that are more than a bit slimy about 
things like squid.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Jason Stubbs]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Saturday 01 May 2004 01:26, Michael Milverton wrote:
> I would seem to think that if you strip credits and rename the actual 
> product itself, eg NOT a derivitave work then you are taking the rights away 
> from the person who wrote it.  

While I agree with your interpretation, the strict *legal* interpretation 
differs to this statement. The GPL basically says that anything that was 
created by way of another's GPL'd code needs to be released under the GPL if 
released. There are no other restrictions regarding what specific parts were 
used to create the "new" product or anything with regards to attribution. It 
is my understanding that this is what will be addressed in "GPL v3".

Regardless of what the intent of the GPL is, (from what I've heard) Debian 
folk have always been about what's legally acceptable. It is a real shame 
that legalities are always open to such vast interpretation. I will find it 
very interesting to see if the alleged attribution-restricted "GPL v3" will 
be accepted as being free.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Don Armstrong]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Putting Stallman's (or FSF's) work in the non-free section of your
> distribution is the lack of respect and gratitude that I speak of.

That perhaps is unfortunate, but we have expended extreme amounts of
effort in attempting to get both yourself and the FSF to consider
licensing there works in a manner consistent with the ideals of the
free software movement and Debian's own Social Contract and DFSG.

I hope you can see that it is a measure of our respect that we have
expended this effort instead of merely leaving these works in
non-free.[1]

> This happens due to peer reviewed journals in science.

It happens even in journals that are not peer reviewed, and merely
editor reviewed, because it is the way that the broader scientific
community expects people to behave.

> In free software there is no such social mechanism affecting RedHat
> and preventing them from removing the k from all the kde programs.

Surely there is! If we (or RedHat) were to do such a thing, our very
users and developers would be quite vocal about it, and rightly so.

This is no different than what happens when someone fails to properly
attribute in a scientific journal. The community at large complains,
and the problem is dealt with, or at least made public.

[Finally, Debian isn't in the business of marketing at all. We are
interested in producing the best Free operating system(s) possible,
but aren't (in general) particularly worried about how many people
actually use Debian. We take the "If you build it, they will come"
approach.]

> you already did, you removed the credits from ReiserFS (none of
> which are credits for me, please keep that in mind, I do not take
> this stand for my personal benefit, my name is on the filesystem and
> that is more than enough credit for me).

The patch that you're refering to is currently not even applied. What
it actually did was add a -quiet option to suppress the outputing of
the DARPA sponsorship message.

Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.

> What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?

Copyright requires that appropriate attribution occurs. We follow
copyright, and almost always follow author and copyright holder
requests with respect to their work.

> the end user is not the issue, I think the current phrasing even
> defines that the end user can remove them.

Yes, but in order for the work to be free, the end user must also be
capable of distributing his or her modifications.


Don Armstrong

1: I personally have travelled to meet with individuals at FSF to work
on bringing the GFDL issue to an amicable conclusion, and Debian is
itself comitted to doing it's utmost to bring works to a state where
they can be freely included in Debian.
-- 
"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

http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hubert Chan]

>>>>> "David" == David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> writes:

[...]

David> Basically, by having "free" and "non-free", you lump everything
David> together into "free" as in absolutely, strictly, lilly-white,
David> no-strings-attached freedom, while "non-free" covers everything
David> from reiser (free, as above, with the restriction that there must
David> be attribution) to microsoft (you pay a huge license fee and
David> basically sign away your soul).

Actually, things Microsoft would most likely not even get into
non-free.  Things in non-free must still be freely distributable, which
most Microsoft things are not.

So there is "free", "non-free", and "not-even-packaged-because-we-can't-
distribute-it".

Also, non-free is technically not a part of Debian -- it is only
maintained as a convenience to users.  Putting something in non-free
basically means, "we can't put this into Debian proper because it
conflicts with our Social Contract, but we recognize that users may
still want to use it."

-- 
Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 06:34:11PM +1000, Stewart Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-04-25 at 05:32, Domenico Andreoli wrote:
> > > Also, a clustering file system built to work on top of this file
> > > system shall be considered a derivative work for the purposes of
> > > interpreting the GPL license granted herein.  Plugins are also to be
> > > considered derivative works.  Share code or pay money, we give you the
> > > choice.

> > Surely a license cannot add anything to the set of derived works (if
> > the other work is not derived, the license obviously doesn't apply to
> > it and hence never gets to say it is derived; if it is, it is even
> > without the license saying so). However I believe -legal has not
> > considered text like this a problem before (I might be wrong though).

> It doesn't "add", it clarifies. i.e. if you build a clustered file
> system that does stuff specific to reiserfs (e.g. use the reiser4
> syscall), then that will be considered a derived work, and must be
> distributable under the GPL.

> Sure, you could go to court and argue that it isn't - but namesys have a
> clear clarification of what they consider, so I hope your lawyer is good
> :)

The term "derivative work" in the GPL is defined by copyright law and
case law.  Any author is free to use a different definition in his
license, but such a license is no longer congruent with the GPL.  If
the intent here is "these things are defined to be derivative works for
the purpose of this license" rather than "you are warned that we will
regard these things as derivative works when deciding whether to sue
you", then Hans Reiser has no legal authority to make such a definition
change on behalf of *other* copyright holders.  This is why, if a work
made available under this "clarified" GPL license requires code
copyrighted by others who released it under an unmodified GPL license,
Debian must regard that work as undistributable (at least in binary
form) without explicit consent from the other copyright holders.

I'm not sure what works are being distributed under this clarified
license, though, or what their status is as derivative works, so this
may not actually be an issue.

In any case, no one is contesting Hans Reiser's right to make such a
license clarification for his own code; the only question is what the
implications are for Debian's continued distribution of it.

> Think of it in the same light as the clarification in the kernel's copy
> of the GPL saying that userspace programs aren't derived. except here
> it's the other way around.

This is an additional license *grant*, and is therefore not equivalent
to what is discussed above.  The GPL is always compatible with *more*
permissive licenses.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


| that legalities are always open to such vast interpretation. I will
find it
| very interesting to see if the alleged attribution-restricted "GPL v3"
will
| be accepted as being free.

Not that this needs to be said, but it'd be interesting to watch Debian
(free) try to remain a distro of anything if they reject some variant of
the GPL.  They'd certainly have to abandon (or fork) Linux, at least if
Linux adopted the new version -- and I'm guessing he would, considering
that he develops (last I checked) on BitKeeper, which is (again, last I
checked) proprietary.
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

|>>>>>"David" == David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> writes:
|
|
| [...]
|
| David> Basically, by having "free" and "non-free", you lump everything
| David> together into "free" as in absolutely, strictly, lilly-white,
| David> no-strings-attached freedom, while "non-free" covers everything
| David> from reiser (free, as above, with the restriction that there must
| David> be attribution) to microsoft (you pay a huge license fee and
| David> basically sign away your soul).
|
| Actually, things Microsoft would most likely not even get into
| non-free.  Things in non-free must still be freely distributable, which
| most Microsoft things are not.

Most of them.  I wonder if all of them technically require a Windows
license?

| So there is "free", "non-free", and "not-even-packaged-because-we-can't-
| distribute-it".

Still not a whole lot of options.

| Also, non-free is technically not a part of Debian -- it is only
| maintained as a convenience to users.  Putting something in non-free
| basically means, "we can't put this into Debian proper because it
| conflicts with our Social Contract, but we recognize that users may
| still want to use it."

So it'd be a convenience to users (or maybe users should add this
themselves?) to allow for more selective allowing or disallowing of
licenses.

I don't have much personal investment in this -- I use Gentoo, and it's
fairly likely that when I get some free time, I'm going to configure it
to deal with licenses better.  This is because Gentoo already has the
foundation laid for that (and a lot of things) but no actual interface.
~ Every ebuild has a line like this:

LICENSE="GPL"

And in /usr/portage/licenses is a copy of every single license.  So what
would be nice is a way for Portage to, when given a list of packages,
prompt the user to read and agree to licenses:

Do you accept license "GPL" for package "sys-devel/gcc"?
(yes/no/always/never/read):

That wouldn't be too hard to implement for Gentoo.  I'm not sure about
Debian.  Either way, it would involve little or no maintenance on the
part of the package maintainers -- in fact, you could say that Debian
only officially supports a particular list of licenses, but let the user
go ahead and read each one and decide to agree/disagree.  It'd create a
config file that can be copied from machine to machine.

This is getting fairly offtopic for reiserfs-list, and I am losing
interest.  At least, I find Debian to be too strict about stability and
licensing, and I would use reiser4 regardless of the distro.
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Michael Milverton]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1916 bytes --]

On Sat, 1 May 2004 12:56 am, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Michael, you are much more eloquent than I am.  Thanks for understanding.
>
> Hans
>

No worries Hans, understanding, appreciation and acknowledgement are the 
underlying currency of free software. I think that this is often lost in 
these sorts of debates and I believe that if the concerns that you have were 
acknowledged and addressed then it would be easier to work through the 
technical issues that people have with them.

I have been a little bit alarmed over the last month or so at some of the 
barbed comments that people have made in critisising your vision and the 
effort that you have made to create quite a revolutionary filesystem. I find 
it alarming because negative input really makes a large withdrawl from the 
only bank account that free software has, eg the good human interactions and 
the pleasure associated with developing free software, the emotional bank 
account as Steven Covey puts it. I also see the same issue with this credits 
and naming issue, it is withdrawing from this bank account because the 
underlying concerns are not always being heard and understood properly. 

At the end of the day I don't want to see this emotional bank account become 
overdrawn to the point where the negatives of releasing this software outway 
the benefits gained and this is what makes me alarmed and so I feel that 
something must be said.

Therefore to make a deposit into this emotional bank account I would like to 
state that I really appreciate the vision and dedication that you and those 
that work with you have shown in bringing the reiser filesystems into the 
Free Software and I believe that many others feel the same, they just need to 
say it more often so we can balance the bank account :).

Thankyou
Michael Milverton
-- 
GNU/Linux: Secure, Stable, Free
Michael <camel78@iprimus.com.au>

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Steve Langasek]

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On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 05:33:51PM +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> > Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:
> > 
> > 
> >>What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?
> >>None.  There is no alternative actually.
> > 
> > 
> > Exactly: we offer no alternative.  This is not a disagreement about
> > which method of ensuring attribution is correct and acceptable, but a
> > disagreement about whether or not it is appropriate to force attribution
> > according to some particular standard.
> > 
> > It is entirely within your rights as copyright holder to push whatever
> > social agenda you wish with your software license -- but debian-legal's
> > position is that that will make the license non-free.  If you wish to
> > require that it not be used in nuclear facilities, fine: non-free.  If
> > you require that people who use the software spend a moment to think
> > about the plight of the homeless, fine: non-free.  Just as, when you
> > require attribution in a particular format and with a particular text,
> > that's fine, but non-free.

> Did you say this as an official debian spokesperson?

His statement is consistent with the consensus view among regular
participants of the debian-legal mailing list.

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Jason Stubbs wrote:

> On Saturday 01 May 2004 01:26, Michael Milverton wrote:
>
> >I would seem to think that if you strip credits and rename the actual
> >product itself, eg NOT a derivitave work then you are taking the 
> rights away
> >from the person who wrote it.  
>
>
> While I agree with your interpretation, the strict *legal* interpretation
> differs to this statement. The GPL basically says that anything that was
> created by way of another's GPL'd code needs to be released under the 
> GPL if
> released. There are no other restrictions regarding what specific 
> parts were
> used to create the "new" product or anything with regards to 
> attribution. It
> is my understanding that this is what will be addressed in "GPL v3".

That had been my understanding until recently, and I was waiting for V3, 
but Stallman has backed away from that except for the GFDL.  GFDL has 
been rejected by debian......

If you want it to be legally clear that you will to not be rebranded as 
RedHatFS, you must use something like my anti-plagiarism license or the 
XFree86 license.  Stallman is not going to cure the problem for 
software, only for documentation, which makes no sense to me.  I think 
he has trouble coping with the reality that people will eagerly and 
aggressively take away credit from others.

>
> Regardless of what the intent of the GPL is, (from what I've heard) 
> Debian
> folk have always been about what's legally acceptable. It is a real shame
> that legalities are always open to such vast interpretation. I will 
> find it
> very interesting to see if the alleged attribution-restricted "GPL v3" 
> will
> be accepted as being free.
>
> Regards,
> Jason Stubbs

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Steve Langasek wrote:

>
>>It doesn't "add", it clarifies. i.e. if you build a clustered file
>>system that does stuff specific to reiserfs (e.g. use the reiser4
>>syscall), then that will be considered a derived work, and must be
>>distributable under the GPL.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>Sure, you could go to court and argue that it isn't - but namesys have a
>>clear clarification of what they consider, so I hope your lawyer is good
>>:)
>>    
>>
>
>The term "derivative work" in the GPL is defined
>
defined very loosely, as it indeed it must be, because it is inherently 
a loose concept.  There is, for instance, nothing in copyright law about 
linking....

> by copyright law and
>case law.  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Thanks much.  This helps after getting a 1.8 million dollar ARDA Reiser6 
proposal rejected because the reviewers thought that the GPL was some 
sort of proprietary license.  (Really they did.  They also thought there 
was no realistic chance of anyone using anything other than Windows in 
the government, but the proprosal using this proprietary GPL license was 
the main killer for 8 of the 9 reviewers, at least one of whom seemed to 
think that it would make the project unlikely to get anywhere in the 
Linux community....  )  I spent weeks on that proposal....

Michael Milverton wrote:

>On Sat, 1 May 2004 12:56 am, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>Michael, you are much more eloquent than I am.  Thanks for understanding.
>>
>>Hans
>>
>>    
>>
>
>No worries Hans, understanding, appreciation and acknowledgement are the 
>underlying currency of free software. I think that this is often lost in 
>these sorts of debates and I believe that if the concerns that you have were 
>acknowledged and addressed then it would be easier to work through the 
>technical issues that people have with them.
>
>I have been a little bit alarmed over the last month or so at some of the 
>barbed comments that people have made in critisising your vision and the 
>effort that you have made to create quite a revolutionary filesystem. I find 
>it alarming because negative input really makes a large withdrawl from the 
>only bank account that free software has, eg the good human interactions and 
>the pleasure associated with developing free software, the emotional bank 
>account as Steven Covey puts it. I also see the same issue with this credits 
>and naming issue, it is withdrawing from this bank account because the 
>underlying concerns are not always being heard and understood properly. 
>
>At the end of the day I don't want to see this emotional bank account become 
>overdrawn to the point where the negatives of releasing this software outway 
>the benefits gained and this is what makes me alarmed and so I feel that 
>something must be said.
>
>Therefore to make a deposit into this emotional bank account I would like to 
>state that I really appreciate the vision and dedication that you and those 
>that work with you have shown in bringing the reiser filesystems into the 
>Free Software and I believe that many others feel the same, they just need to 
>say it more often so we can balance the bank account :).
>
>Thankyou
>Michael Milverton
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-04-30 18:13:09 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> MJ Ray wrote:
>> You just ignored the bit where he forbids supression of the 
>> "credits" 
>> banner?
> I am flexible on the phrasing of this, and can allow some phrasing 
> such as 
> credits must be kept equally prominent and extensive.

Whether this would help depends what you mean by "credits". Requiring 
particular wording and placement beyond what is required to attribute 
probably will be non-free.

>> [...] This whole feud seems to have started because a debian 
>> package maintainer responded to a bug report
> Said maintainer added a bug in the process of removing credits, and 
> thus we 
> found out the credits were removed.  Your phrasing was not a good 
> description

We can argue about who has the most diplomatic language all day, but 
it would be more fun to fix these bugs.

>> from a debian user and then they were accused of plagiarism in a 
>> confrontational response. Not really a sinister plot to steal Hans 
>> Reiser's 
>> work.
> But others out there ARE willing to do so, look at RedHat and KDE.... 
> or 
> consider various startups I know of that are more than a bit slimy 
> about 
> things like squid.

I don't know what RedHat and KDE have to do with Debian and ReiserFS. 
I can look at them and I see red headwear and a cogged letter. Not 
really informative. "Various startups" also has little to do with 
debian, although if you discriminate against them just because they 
are startups, that's probably going to be non-free too.

Back to the topic: copyright infringement is copyright infringement. 
We don't want to infringe your copyright and if we do so, it is a 
serious bug to be fixed. See 
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-04-30 18:07:08 +0100 David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:

> | require attribution in a particular format and with a particular 
> text,
> | that's fine, but non-free.
> This seems entirely too black-and-white to me.

Fine, go debate it somewhere. This is off-topic for debian-legal and 
unwelcome because we have other work to do.

You failed to attribute the previous author. I hope they take a 
liberal view of your copyright infringement, or that you acted within 
your state's "fair use" laws. I still think it's a bit rude of you.

gentoo had no way to choose between licences beyond reading ebuilds, 
last I saw. A generally cavalier attitude to copyright means I no 
longer have any gentoo systems here.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

MJ Ray wrote:

>
> I don't know what RedHat and KDE have to do with Debian and ReiserFS. 
> I can look at them and I see red headwear and a cogged letter. Not 
> really informative. "Various startups" also has little to do with 
> debian, although if you discriminate against them just because they 
> are startups, that's probably going to be non-free too.

I have to use one license that works for all users, and that means that 
I have to use the same license for people who don't want to attribute as 
I use for those who do.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Who the hell do you think you are to use market leveraging to force 
developers to use licenses they don't want that leave them exposed to 
dangers that endanger them not you? 

Have you expended 2-3 million dollars and a decade of your life only to 
find yourself 100,000 dollars in debt and returned to having a day job 
to support the other programmers on the project?  Without knowing you, 
somehow I doubt it. Who do you think you are to try to close me off from 
raising money by using the radical notion of publicly thanking those who 
give it?   Frankly, I don't advise anyone to follow my path: sure the 
software works, and people know my name, but the economics are miserable 
and unsuitable for responsible family raising, and reputation does 
little for you if you never have time to socialize.

You are trying to create a new rigid orthodoxy to close off license 
experimentation (long before we have licenses that work well), and like 
most groups who create such orthodoxies, you are eager to oppress those 
who do not conform to things you do not deeply understand.

I hope the FSF sticks to the GFDL and eventually makes GPL V3 resemble 
it.  As long as the FSF docs are debian non-free, debian non-free is not 
going to be something serious in the eyes of most.

Don Armstrong wrote:

>
>It happens even in journals that are not peer reviewed, and merely
>editor reviewed, because it is the way that the broader scientific
>community expects people to behave.
>  
>
There is no such expectation of Linux distros.

>  
>
>>In free software there is no such social mechanism affecting RedHat
>>and preventing them from removing the k from all the kde programs.
>>    
>>
>
>Surely there is! If we (or RedHat) were to do such a thing, our very
>users and developers would be quite vocal about it, and rightly so.
>  
>
They did it and nothing happened to them (except of course that XFree86 
4.0 changed its license, which is the only way developers can 
effectively respond to such conduct).

>  
>
>
>The patch that you're refering to is currently not even applied. What
>it actually did was add a -quiet option to suppress the outputing of
>the DARPA sponsorship message.
>  
>
and what made you think it was your place to do that?

In a democracy, funding programs which are not known by the public to 
have provided much benefit get their funding cut. (When the democracy 
works well, what happens when it does not is off-topic.....)

>Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
>in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
>  
>
oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of the 
moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.

>  
>
>>What alternative do you offer to ensure that attribution occurs?
>>    
>>
>
>Copyright requires that appropriate attribution occurs.
>
It requires not removing the copyright notice which usually mentions the 
copyright holder is (me), and you know, I don't really fancy changing 
the mount type to "mount -t copyrighthansreiser2001200220032004 /dev/hda 
/home".  Everyone else but me gets completely shafted.

> We follow
>copyright, and almost always follow author and copyright holder
>requests with respect to their work.
>
>  
>
>>the end user is not the issue, I think the current phrasing even
>>defines that the end user can remove them.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, but in order for the work to be free, the end user must also be
>capable of distributing his or her modifications.
>
>
>Don Armstrong
>
>1: I personally have travelled to meet with individuals at FSF to work
>on bringing the GFDL issue to an amicable conclusion,
>
It isn't your place to force a license on software you did not write.

> and Debian is
>itself comitted to doing it's utmost to bring works to a state where
>they can be freely included in Debian.
>  
>
Well, I hope that we can find some means for being well and effectively 
integrated into the non-free section.  That would make me happy. 

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Stefan Traby]

On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 12:12:04PM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

> the main killer for 8 of the 9 reviewers, at least one of whom seemed to 
> think that it would make the project unlikely to get anywhere in the 
> Linux community....  )  I spent weeks on that proposal....

ooops. Hans, don't get me wrong now.
I really think that you have great visions and that you discovered
the golden rule: "visions are useless if you can't transform them
into reality".

I do not know if there any discussions about getting reiser4 into
the standard kernel but I guess some people are at least not
amused to see a random syscall that has a version number in
it's name to go into the standard kernel.
I didn't care - until you declared reiserfs3 obsoleted by reiser4
in public.

syscalls tend to have a longer expectation of life than
filesystems - I'm very sure that fork(2) is older than
ext2 - so please at least consider the removal of the
version number and think about active long-term support.

If the syntax of the reiser[4]()-syscall is really
as desribed on http://namesys.com (reiser4() System Call Description)
I do not expect that stuff will make it into the
mainstream kernel.

Please really don't get me wrong - I just remember
EHASHCOLLISION which was simply unacceptable for the
mainstream kernel - IIRC Chris patched it out not
many seconds before Linus accepted reiserfs - after
many discussions.

-- 

  ciao - 
    Stefan

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Don Armstrong]

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On Sun, 02 May 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Who the hell do you think you are to use market leveraging to force
> developers to use licenses they don't want that leave them exposed
> to dangers that endanger them not you?

Could the personal attacks please be toned down?

We aren't in the business of forcing developers to do anything.
Developers make their own decisions on how their work is licensed, and
are quite free to make their work available in a proprietary product,
shareware, or freeware. Debian has freely chosen not to be involved
with distributing such works for various reasons.

> Don Armstrong wrote:
> >The patch that you're refering to is currently not even
> >applied. What it actually did was add a -quiet option to suppress
> >the outputing of the DARPA sponsorship message.
> 
> and what made you think it was your place to do that?

My place? I'm not the one who applied it. Presumably it was applied
because an end user requested that it be applied. Clearly it's
perfectly reasonable to have an option for a program that enables it
to be used in non-interactive ways. Would you object to us having a
shell that allows users to do the equivalent of "foo > /dev/null"?

> In a democracy, funding programs which are not known by the public
> to have provided much benefit get their funding cut.

Probably, but I fail to see how allowing the user to turn off the
DARPA message decreases the end user's knowledge of who funded it.

> >Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
> >in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
>
> oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of
> the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.

The end user can choose to read it, or they can choose not
to. Regardless, they should not be assaulted by the credits or forced
to read them. Going back to journal articles, is the funding grant
number emblazoned in 24 point font above the article title?[1]
 
> >Copyright requires that appropriate attribution occurs.
>
> It requires not removing the copyright notice which usually mentions
> the copyright holder is (me), and you know, I don't really fancy
> changing the mount type to "mount -t
> copyrighthansreiser2001200220032004 /dev/hda /home".  Everyone else
> but me gets completely shafted.

Uh, that wouldn't be a proper copyright notice. Copyright notices have
a specific place in Debian, and are always placed there. [They are
also often included in the --version output for most programs.]

Furthermore, we expect copyright notices to also indicate the terms
under which they are (or are not) licensed.

> >1: I personally have travelled to meet with individuals at FSF to
> >work on bringing the GFDL issue to an amicable conclusion,
> 
> It isn't your place to force a license on software you did not
> write.

I *CANNOT* force a license on software that I do not own the copyright
to.[2] To claim that I am (or have) is reprehensible. This is in
effect claiming that I (in my capacity as an individual!) have
extorted (or blackmailed) the FSF. I have done no such thing, nor have
any other members of the GFDL committee.


Don Armstrong

1: For those of you unfamiliar with journal articles, the funding
grant number is generally included at the very end of the article
before the references in a normal font size. [This is also where
acknowledgements (like my major professor's to Dr. Smirnoff) are
generally placed.]
2: At least not without committing a felony and a extreme breech of
my personal ethics.
-- 
It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong
 -- Chris Torek

http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:55, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > >Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
> > >in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
> > oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of
> > the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.

I don't know what you are reading once you've installed a new program on
your system, but the README, README.Debian and the man-pages are for me
usually the FIRST place, since it might hold valuable information and
safe me the trouble, which i may have, if i didn't had read it.

So, if you know somebody (including yourself) that doesn't do it I'm
really in doubt about the security of your system. There is actually
useful information in there.

/Martin
--
The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure.  Are you?
                -- Ogden Nash

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[mjt]

On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 02:55:00PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
>shareware, or freeware. Debian has freely chosen not to be involved
>with distributing such works for various reasons.

It's really quite a shame that the best distro around is so rigid
as to not allow Reiser's minor, and understandable, addition in
his licensing.

In case you (no-one personally) haven't noticed yet, developing free
software isn't easy. No-one said it would be. It has never been. It's
a tough business and unfortunately it has to be a business as well as
"just for fun."

>My place? I'm not the one who applied it. Presumably it was applied
>because an end user requested that it be applied. Clearly it's
>perfectly reasonable to have an option for a program that enables it
>to be used in non-interactive ways. Would you object to us having a
>shell that allows users to do the equivalent of "foo > /dev/null"?

Wouldn't mkfs -f > /dev/null be adequate suppression?

>Probably, but I fail to see how allowing the user to turn off the
>DARPA message decreases the end user's knowledge of who funded it.

Credits unread are credits unknown.

Hopefully Reiser4 will reach the point of being an fs on which people
will install their Linuxes and if the credits are completely suppressed,
we'll have a situation with a bunch of Linux users sitting in a pub
"You know, DARPA funded Reiser4" "What, you must be shitting me?" "No,
honest to Bog" "That's so cool!"

>> >Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
>> >in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.

Which should of course be read, but still not everyone reads the README.

>The end user can choose to read it, or they can choose not
>to. Regardless, they should not be assaulted by the credits or forced
>to read them. Going back to journal articles, is the funding grant
>number emblazoned in 24 point font above the article title?[1]

What if there just were a compromise?

Of course it sucks if Reiser4 gets only into non-free, because it would
never then be in the official installer. Besides, from what I've understood,
Debian developers spend quite some time bickering amongst themselves, causing
the Sarge installer to be delayed by a year or so and having the possibility
of completely detaching non-free from Debian.

What this probably means is that the DDs will be fighting each other over
stuff like this for eons and eons and if non-free is detached entirely
it will be even more difficult to get a non-free installer with Reiser4
on it. At least now it could be downloadable from Debian, unless some
policy forbids hosting of non-free installers but not non-free software.

I know it's a tough bullet to bite for Hans if he just removed the addition
to the license and formatted the credits so that no-one would even want
to remove them. AFAIK the reason they were removed was that they were too
big.

Oh, and the funding grant thing, weren't the credits of mkfs.reiserfs
in the end? Where else? It's not like they were flooded all the bloody
time in 24-point font above the title...

I should probably run an mkfs.reiser4 and see the notorious credits, because
I can't remember anything offensive about them.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Claus Färber]

MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> schrieb/wrote:
> Sadly, your "invariant section"-inspired changes to the GPL cause
> other problems, which seem similar to combining an ad-clause licence
> with the GPL.

Rememer that an "ad-clause" usually does not render a work non-free,
just incompatible with the GPL. Depending on the size of the ads, it can
be a practical problem or a usability problem, however.

Claus
-- 
http://www.faerber.muc.de

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Don Armstrong wrote:

>
>The end user can choose to read it, or they can choose not
>to. Regardless, they should not be assaulted by the credits or forced
>to read them. Going back to journal articles, is the funding grant
>number emblazoned in 24 point font above the article title?[1]
>  
>
funding agencies are always mentioned on the original article but not 
the citations of them, not sure what your point is?

I have never seen a journal reproduce another journal's article while 
deleting the mention of the funding agency.  That kind of abuse seems 
reserved for linux distros to practice.

> 
>  
>
>>>Copyright requires that appropriate attribution occurs.
>>>      
>>>
>>It requires not removing the copyright notice which usually mentions
>>the copyright holder is (me), and you know, I don't really fancy
>>changing the mount type to "mount -t
>>copyrighthansreiser2001200220032004 /dev/hda /home".  Everyone else
>>but me gets completely shafted.
>>    
>>
>
>Uh, that wouldn't be a proper copyright notice.
>
Legally it most certainly would be.

> Copyright notices have
>a specific place in Debian, and are always placed there.
>
Moving them would violate the law.

> [They are
>also often included in the --version output for most programs.]
>
>Furthermore, we expect copyright notices to also indicate the terms
>under which they are (or are not) licensed.
>  
>
The law does not require this, nor does the GPL.

>  
>
>>>1: I personally have travelled to meet with individuals at FSF to
>>>work on bringing the GFDL issue to an amicable conclusion,
>>>      
>>>
>>It isn't your place to force a license on software you did not
>>write.
>>    
>>
>
>I *CANNOT* force a license on software that I do not own the copyright
>to.[2] To claim that I am (or have) is reprehensible. This is in
>effect claiming that I (in my capacity as an individual!) have
>extorted (or blackmailed) the FSF. I have done no such thing, nor have
>any other members of the GFDL committee.
>  
>
You as a group are attempting to coerce using the market leverage that 
Debian genuinely does possess and seems willing and aggressively eager 
to use.  Are you going to claim that market leverage is not a very real 
and potent form of coercion? 

Stallman is experimenting with methods of requiring crediting, and you 
are getting in the way of an effort to research and test new solutions 
to real problems in current licensing techniques which you are not 
concerned about because they put persons other than you and your 
committee at risk.  My experiments (slightly different from Stallmans 
and I think slightly more to the point than documentation licensing) are 
also being frustrated by you.

In regards to font size and all that, I have already said that it is 
sufficient for me if the credits are equally prominent, and retain their 
wording, and you are free to change their graphical presentation subject 
to that.  Sending them to /dev/null does not make them equally prominent 
compared to the original form.  I am quite willing to cooperate on all 
matters of finessing things so that installs are smooth and elegant, 
etc., and to develop any improved licensing wording that would enhance 
freedom of installer writers while retaining the presentation of the 
credits.  Actually, I think that requiring that the credits be equally 
prominent and retain their wording is quite flexible for that purpose 
already, but please inform me if you see an issue I missed.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Martin List-Petersen wrote:

>On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:55, Don Armstrong wrote:
>  
>
>>>>Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
>>>>in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of
>>>the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.
>>>      
>>>
>
>I don't know what you are reading once you've installed a new program on
>your system, but the README, README.Debian and the man-pages are for me
>usually the FIRST place, since it might hold valuable information and
>safe me the trouble, which i may have, if i didn't had read it.
>  
>
I never read these (except the man pages) unless the install fails in 
some way (I read the NVIDIA ones many times....), and neither do 99% of 
real users, including 99% of reiserfs users.  As a user, I can handle 
the distro flashing information on my screen as it installs and I can 
read that, or printing credits when I select a particular package for 
the install, and I can handle a tool printing credits when it starts up 
(ala mkreiser4) for me to read, but going through a list of 3000 
packages after the install completes and reading their readmes and 
credits files just ain't gonna happen.

As a developer, I can probably be talked out of anything that makes the 
install slower or more awkward or adds more clicks.  If there is another 
paradigm in place for displaying info about the packages during the 
install (I encourage you to have one), I would most likely be happy to 
conform to that.

>So, if you know somebody (including yourself) that doesn't do it I'm
>really in doubt about the security of your system. There is actually
>useful information in there.
>
>/Martin
>--
>The camel has a single hump;
>The dromedary two;
>Or else the other way around.
>I'm never sure.  Are you?
>                -- Ogden Nash
>
>
>
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Markus Törnqvist wrote:

>
>  
>
>>Probably, but I fail to see how allowing the user to turn off the
>>DARPA message decreases the end user's knowledge of who funded it.
>>    
>>
>
>Credits unread are credits unknown.
>  
>
The problem is not the end user, the problem is that distros do it 
without the end user ever knowing that there was something to turn off.

>
>  
>
>>The end user can choose to read it, or they can choose not
>>to. Regardless, they should not be assaulted by the credits or forced
>>to read them. Going back to journal articles, is the funding grant
>>number emblazoned in 24 point font above the article title?[1]
>>    
>>
>
>What if there just were a compromise?
>
>Of course it sucks if Reiser4 gets only into non-free, because it would
>never then be in the official installer. Besides, from what I've understood,
>Debian developers spend quite some time bickering amongst themselves, causing
>the Sarge installer to be delayed by a year or so and having the possibility
>of completely detaching non-free from Debian.
>
>What this probably means is that the DDs will be fighting each other over
>stuff like this for eons and eons and if non-free is detached entirely
>it will be even more difficult to get a non-free installer with Reiser4
>on it. At least now it could be downloadable from Debian, unless some
>policy forbids hosting of non-free installers but not non-free software.
>
>I know it's a tough bullet to bite for Hans if he just removed the addition
>to the license and formatted the credits so that no-one would even want
>to remove them. AFAIK the reason they were removed was that they were too
>big.
>
>Oh, and the funding grant thing, weren't the credits of mkfs.reiserfs
>in the end? Where else? It's not like they were flooded all the bloody
>time in 24-point font above the title...
>
>I should probably run an mkfs.reiser4 and see the notorious credits, because
>I can't remember anything offensive about them.
>
>  
>
There is nothing offensive about them.  We reduced them to a random 
credit, rather than an exhaustive credit like they were.  Now users 
might actually take the time to read them.;-)

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 18:04, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:55, Don Armstrong wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>>>Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
> >>>>in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
> >>>>        
> >>>>
> >>>oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of
> >>>the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.
> >>>      
> >>>
> >
> >I don't know what you are reading once you've installed a new program on
> >your system, but the README, README.Debian and the man-pages are for me
> >usually the FIRST place, since it might hold valuable information and
> >safe me the trouble, which i may have, if i didn't had read it.
> >  
> >
> I never read these (except the man pages) unless the install fails in 
> some way (I read the NVIDIA ones many times....), and neither do 99% of 
> real users, including 99% of reiserfs users.  As a user, I can handle 
> the distro flashing information on my screen as it installs and I can 
> read that, or printing credits when I select a particular package for 
> the install, and I can handle a tool printing credits when it starts up 
> (ala mkreiser4) for me to read, but going through a list of 3000 
> packages after the install completes and reading their readmes and 
> credits files just ain't gonna happen.

Probably not for each and every after the installation of your operating
system, but let's take mkreiserfs. Everyone has at some point asked
himself why there are two formats to choose (3.5 and 3.6)

Thats something you definatly go for the man pages or readme for.

And if you install packages (single) at a later time, you would often go
for the README. Same situation is, if you are installing from source.

> As a developer, I can probably be talked out of anything that makes the 
> install slower or more awkward or adds more clicks.  If there is another 
> paradigm in place for displaying info about the packages during the 
> install (I encourage you to have one), I would most likely be happy to 
> conform to that.

I think actually showing credit's, README's and other important things during install is exactly
the right way of going, instead of showing them any time you are using the software.

My personal opinion (and i speak only for myself here) would be to have it come up with the default
screen (as any Debian package does, if there is something important) and that might include the credits.
You would just have to accept, that this popup can be disabled for automatic install, because an system
administrator, that anyway saw your credits the first time he installed it, does want to hit enter a
couple of times during unattended (as the name says) install.

/Martin
--
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.  Second marriage is 
the triumph of hope over experience.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[mjt]

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:11:29AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

>>Credits unread are credits unknown.
>The problem is not the end user, the problem is that distros do it 
>without the end user ever knowing that there was something to turn off.

Mayhaps. But it's never that easy.

Debian could quite easily have a preinstall screen with all the credits,
but that would have to replace the mandatory showing of the credits.
That's, as far as I'd guess, not an option, because the credits would be
removed.

The credits could also go to /dev/null with a preinstall screen, but that
would not fix the non-free issue.

Also, if every software showed their credits, there would easily be a ton
of them. But many modules do show some credits when inserted.

I don't know, I don't have an answer to this.

Except that I think it's absurd that someone would knowingly and willingly
even want to suppress credits if they're put there. Especially in a case
where the developer has tried to minimize them.

That's still not an answer, though.

>There is nothing offensive about them.  We reduced them to a random 
>credit, rather than an exhaustive credit like they were.  Now users 
>might actually take the time to read them.;-)

Problem is, might be as in my case, that I don't remember them...
But when information is spewed on my screen, I tend to read it, but how
much is a credit unremembered worth?

Why is it so difficult to try to argue both sides, because both sides have
good points?

What if Debian just accepted that a clause forbidding removal of credits
set by the copyright holder is not limiting freedom?

I mean, it's not THAT major an issue. If people think the credits suck,
they'll stick them up their /dev/null. So it's in the best interest of the
developer to make sure they don't annoy anyone. And people should have the
right to be credited fairly for their work if they want to.

-- 
mjt
PERKELE!

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Martin List-Petersen wrote:

>On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 18:04, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>Martin List-Petersen wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:55, Don Armstrong wrote:
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>>>Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my knowledge)
>>>>>>in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
>>>>>>       
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side of
>>>>>the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.
>>>>>     
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>I don't know what you are reading once you've installed a new program on
>>>your system, but the README, README.Debian and the man-pages are for me
>>>usually the FIRST place, since it might hold valuable information and
>>>safe me the trouble, which i may have, if i didn't had read it.
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I never read these (except the man pages) unless the install fails in 
>>some way (I read the NVIDIA ones many times....), and neither do 99% of 
>>real users, including 99% of reiserfs users.  As a user, I can handle 
>>the distro flashing information on my screen as it installs and I can 
>>read that, or printing credits when I select a particular package for 
>>the install, and I can handle a tool printing credits when it starts up 
>>(ala mkreiser4) for me to read, but going through a list of 3000 
>>packages after the install completes and reading their readmes and 
>>credits files just ain't gonna happen.
>>    
>>
>
>Probably not for each and every after the installation of your operating
>system, but let's take mkreiserfs. Everyone has at some point asked
>himself why there are two formats to choose (3.5 and 3.6)
>
>Thats something you definatly go for the man pages or readme for.
>
>And if you install packages (single) at a later time, you would often go
>for the README. Same situation is, if you are installing from source.
>
>  
>
>>As a developer, I can probably be talked out of anything that makes the 
>>install slower or more awkward or adds more clicks.  If there is another 
>>paradigm in place for displaying info about the packages during the 
>>install (I encourage you to have one), I would most likely be happy to 
>>conform to that.
>>    
>>
>
>I think actually showing credit's, README's and other important things during install is exactly
>the right way of going, instead of showing them any time you are using the software.
>  
>
well, okay, I can be talked into that, though with random credits, 
repetition is not repetition....

>My personal opinion (and i speak only for myself here) would be to have it come up with the default
>screen (as any Debian package does, if there is something important) and that might include the credits.
>You would just have to accept, that this popup can be disabled for automatic install, because an system
>administrator, that anyway saw your credits the first time he installed it, does want to hit enter a
>couple of times during unattended (as the name says) install.
>  
>

Oh, I don't think the sysadmin or user should have to hit enter at all 
during any install..... credits should be displayed while packages are 
installing or bitmap blocks are being zeroed or....

and an unattended machine should install without any clicks at all once 
the install starts up....

If Debian would pro-actively find effective and reasonably ways to 
credit authors, then the tension would come out of this situation....  
The problem is when they discuss whether I would be formally satisfied 
if the credits go to /dev/null.....

Hans

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Markus Törnqvist wrote:

>On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:11:29AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>Credits unread are credits unknown.
>>>      
>>>
>>The problem is not the end user, the problem is that distros do it 
>>without the end user ever knowing that there was something to turn off.
>>    
>>
>
>Mayhaps. But it's never that easy.
>
>Debian could quite easily have a preinstall screen with all the credits,
>but that would have to replace the mandatory showing of the credits.
>That's, as far as I'd guess, not an option, because the credits would be
>removed.
>  
>
No, that certainly is an option.  Relocating the credits to somewhere 
reasonable for a particular installer is just fine with me.

>The credits could also go to /dev/null with a preinstall screen, but that
>would not fix the non-free issue.
>
>Also, if every software showed their credits, there would easily be a ton
>of them.
>
This is bad why?  They could be interesting for users to read while the 
install proceeds.

> But many modules do show some credits when inserted.
>
>I don't know, I don't have an answer to this.
>
>Except that I think it's absurd that someone would knowingly and willingly
>even want to suppress credits if they're put there. Especially in a case
>where the developer has tried to minimize them.
>  
>
It is absurd, but it is reality.

>That's still not an answer, though.
>
>  
>
>>There is nothing offensive about them.  We reduced them to a random 
>>credit, rather than an exhaustive credit like they were.  Now users 
>>might actually take the time to read them.;-)
>>    
>>
>
>Problem is, might be as in my case, that I don't remember them...
>But when information is spewed on my screen, I tend to read it, but how
>much is a credit unremembered worth?
>  
>
Well, hey, making the credits memorable is up to us, and if we fail we fail.

>Why is it so difficult to try to argue both sides, because both sides have
>good points?
>
>What if Debian just accepted that a clause forbidding removal of credits
>set by the copyright holder is not limiting freedom?
>
>I mean, it's not THAT major an issue. If people think the credits suck,
>they'll stick them up their /dev/null. So it's in the best interest of the
>developer to make sure they don't annoy anyone. And people should have the
>right to be credited fairly for their work if they want to.
>
>  
>
Thanks for understanding.

RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Burnes, James]

Is there any way to do an MD5 of either (1) each module in a software
subsystem or (2) each software version and then have a central registry
where interested developers and users can go to see the credits?

That way you could simply do an MD5 of the current binary and use that
fingerprint to see who wrote and contributed to it.  Much like the CDDB
database takes a track/time fingerprint of CD's and then tells you which
songs and artist made the CD.

This could be a kind of historical registry for developers.  If they
want to they can use it to demonstrate to potential employers,
contractors and/or new IPOs to prove their contributions.

It might also be invaluable to eventual science historians that would
like to research the individuals contributing to certain important
systems.

That would seem to be the scalable way to do it.  You could also include
the credits in the source code, but not require them to be duplicated in
in GPL derived works.

I'm sure there are angles I haven't thought of since I'm running on 3
hours sleep.  Maybe a way to look at binary diffs and say, "this is 95%
similar to ReiserFS Version 4.3, would you like to view the credits for
this system?"

Or something like that.

jim burnes
security engineer
great-west, denver
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hans Reiser [mailto:reiser@namesys.com]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 11:05 AM
> To: Martin List-Petersen
> Cc: Don Armstrong; debian-legal@lists.debian.org; reiserfs-
> list@namesys.com
> Subject: Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
> 
> Martin List-Petersen wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:55, Don Armstrong wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>>Furthermore, the list of credits are still included (to my
knowledge)
> >>>>in /usr/share/doc/resierfsprogs/README.gz.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>oh, well, that is almost as good as putting them on the dark side
of
> >>>the moon....  a credit read by no one has no meaning.
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >I don't know what you are reading once you've installed a new program
on
> >your system, but the README, README.Debian and the man-pages are for
me
> >usually the FIRST place, since it might hold valuable information and
> >safe me the trouble, which i may have, if i didn't had read it.
> >
> >
> I never read these (except the man pages) unless the install fails in
> some way (I read the NVIDIA ones many times....), and neither do 99%
of
> real users, including 99% of reiserfs users.  As a user, I can handle
> the distro flashing information on my screen as it installs and I can
> read that, or printing credits when I select a particular package for
> the install, and I can handle a tool printing credits when it starts
up
> (ala mkreiser4) for me to read, but going through a list of 3000
> packages after the install completes and reading their readmes and
> credits files just ain't gonna happen.
> 
> As a developer, I can probably be talked out of anything that makes
the
> install slower or more awkward or adds more clicks.  If there is
another
> paradigm in place for displaying info about the packages during the
> install (I encourage you to have one), I would most likely be happy to
> conform to that.
> 
> >So, if you know somebody (including yourself) that doesn't do it I'm
> >really in doubt about the security of your system. There is actually
> >useful information in there.
> >
> >/Martin
> >--
> >The camel has a single hump;
> >The dromedary two;
> >Or else the other way around.
> >I'm never sure.  Are you?
> >                -- Ogden Nash
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Burnes, James wrote:

>Is there any way to do an MD5 of either (1) each module in a software
>subsystem or (2) each software version and then have a central registry
>where interested developers and users can go to see the credits?
>
>  
>
Credits that users must take action to see are not effective credits. No 
one will look at them.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[mjt]

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:35:12AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

>No, that certainly is an option.  Relocating the credits to somewhere 
>reasonable for a particular installer is just fine with me.

Let's see what the Debian people say about showing the complete credits
in the preinstall screen during interactive installation and scrolling
through them automatically in a non-interactive one, for example.

I think the response will be "but it's still non-free" :P

>>Also, if every software showed their credits, there would easily be a ton
>>of them.
>This is bad why?  They could be interesting for users to read while the 
>install proceeds.

I wouldn't mind it. However, it could get out of hand if we had
three-four-five screenfulls of credits during every boot. Then it's time
to /dev/null again...

Credits (as commercials and ads and stuff) should never defeat the purpose
of the entity of which they are a part.

>Well, hey, making the credits memorable is up to us, and if we fail we fail.

Other factors affect. I check the Namesys page and all often enough to sort
of know the credits. I'm also always busy and absent-minded.

And not everyone cares, so they don't remember, or read, even if it were
pushed on them.

For me it's something of a balanec of the two, with Reiser being something
where I've read the credits. Same for some movies and TV series.

I don't think I'm alone on that one.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Chris Dukes]

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 08:49:10PM +0300, Markus Törnqvist wrote:
[SNEEPAGE]
Perhaps this is overly cynical but...
In this day and age people only seem to care about proper attribution
when either
1) Looking for another garbage novel to read.
2) Looking for someone to sue.

The former seems to be covered by having the author's name in bigger
type than the title of the novel.
The latter, it doesn't matter how well the credits are buried, the
presumed targets will be served.
So as a compromise can we have
hansreiserfs* as the prefix on all packages.
HANSREISER as the prefix on all executables, kernel symbols, fstypes...
Frequent use of bold and blink for the text HANS REISER as well.

I don't know about other folks, but the credits filling my terminal
windows and logs get first dibs on catching the blame on whatever
may be going wrong with my computer.
-- 
Chris Dukes
Been there, done that, got the slightly-charred t-shirt. -- Crowder

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Hans Reiser said on Mon, May 03, 2004 at 09:35:39AM -0700,:

 > Stallman is experimenting with methods of requiring crediting,

Huh? After terming the BSD-with advertising-clause license  `obnoxious'? 
 
 > credits.   Actually, I  think that  requiring that  the  credits be
 > equally prominent  and retain their  wording is quite  flexible for
 > that purpose  already, but please inform  me if you see  an issue I
 > missed.

I'm *not* a developer. 
 
As a  user, I will find it  extremely inconvenient to be  faced with a
load of messages *anytime*, boot, or whatever. 

I hope you will appreciate that  most distros are trying their best to
mask the  boot messages from  users, because users  do not want  to be
concerned  with all  those mess(ages).  How  else do  you expect  that
credits should be displayed? 

-- 
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
                                          
  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
  'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,               
  Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,               
  Kerala, India.                          
                                          
  http://paivakil.port5.com         
                                          
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+

RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 18:41, Burnes, James wrote:
> Is there any way to do an MD5 of either (1) each module in a software
> subsystem or (2) each software version and then have a central registry
> where interested developers and users can go to see the credits?
>
> That way you could simply do an MD5 of the current binary and use that
> fingerprint to see who wrote and contributed to it.  Much like the CDDB
> database takes a track/time fingerprint of CD's and then tells you which
> songs and artist made the CD.

Not an option, since the software is distributed in source and the look
of the binary varies based on operating system, library version, the
compiler used etc.

Also that would prevent you from modifying the source.

Freedom gone and not redistributable within Debian.

Debian actually does do checksums on the packages, but that is for security and prove of
origin reasons.

Kind regards,
Martin List-Petersen
--
"Now we'll have to kill you."
        -- Linus Torvalds

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Don Armstrong]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2729 bytes --]

On Mon, 03 May 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I have never seen a journal reproduce another journal's article
> while deleting the mention of the funding agency.  That kind of
> abuse seems reserved for linux distros to practice.

Yes, but one of the reasons why they don't have to is because people
writing those journal articles don't place their funding agency at the
top of the article in 24 point font.[1]

> Moving them would violate the law.

No. Changing a copyright notice (in its legal effect) would violate
the law. Moving it would not. [Any more so than me moving moving these
journal articles on my desk is illegal.]

> The law does not require this, nor does the GPL.

If the license the work is licensed under is not specified, typically
immediatly after the copyright statement, then the copyright holder
has retained all rights granted by copyright. Thus, placing the work
under the GPL or any other license requires this.

> Are you going to claim that market leverage is not a very real and
> potent form of coercion?

If ReiserFS is concerned about its market share, it might be. But if
ReiserFS is developing Free Software, I'm not sure what market share
has to do with anything.

Debian has had its Free Software Guidelines for quite some time, and
has been enforcing them for longer than reiserfs has been in a stable
kernel. We have always applied them[2] to determine what we can and
cannot distribute. We apply them for various reasons, some of them
pragmatic, some of them dogmatic.

>  My experiments (slightly different from Stallmans and I think
> slightly more to the point than documentation licensing) are also
> being frustrated by you.

So then you think that Debian should ignore it's own Social Contract
because it is interfering with your license experimentation?


I have no idea if a Free Software license is what is right for
reiserfs. If it is, then you must be willing to allow modifications to
reiserfs in ways that you don't particularly like. If you are unable
to allow use or modifications that are abhorrent to you, then Free
Software is probably not right for reiserfs.

You can request that they respect your wishes, and most will do so.[3]
But to require that they respect your wishes is to begin the long
descent into the territory of software that is not Free.


Don Armstrong

1: Possibly because journal editors don't allow this, but I digress.
2: Well, since we've had them, anyway.
3: Assuming they're reasonable wishes (and people...)
-- 
There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved
by brute strength and ignorance.
 -- William's Law

http://www.donarmstrong.com
http://rzlab.ucr.edu

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Tim Donahue]

On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 14:16, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
> Hans Reiser said on Mon, May 03, 2004 at 09:35:39AM -0700,:
> 
>  > credits.   Actually, I  think that  requiring that  the  credits be
>  > equally prominent  and retain their  wording is quite  flexible for
>  > that purpose  already, but please inform  me if you see  an issue I
>  > missed.
> 
> I'm *not* a developer.
> 
> As a  user, I will find it  extremely inconvenient to be  faced with a
> load of messages *anytime*, boot, or whatever.
> 

As a systems administrator, I would have to agree with this,
*especially* when I am trying to debug a problem.  Perhaps a -q (or
--quiet, or whatever your poison is) option should be included by
default.  Then a request could be made that the quiet option not be
enabled by default by distributions.

Two other ideas that I personally wouldn't mind.  Insead of that crappy
marketing stuff that some distributions use (I will refrain from
mentioning names here.) perhaps a progress bar could be shown and we
could read the credits for the various software packages.  

My other thought was a welcome, or first use, message of some type. 
When I install OpenBSD, the first login includes a welcome message which
lists the software packages included in the base, some tips for where to
start, and it also has a list of developers.  Perhaps a welcome message
could be displayed the first time that one of the applications is used
(or it is displayed until the user disables that message).

Tim Donahue

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

This email spoke much about "forcing". To me, forcing is almost always 
compulsion. That's not really what Reiser or Debian can do to each 
other. The only thing I see that can be compelled is for Debian not to 
distribute Reiser's software at all, if it goes under totally 
no-copying terms.

On 2004-05-02 22:02:38 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> Who the hell do you think you are to use market leveraging to force 
> developers to use licenses they don't want that leave them exposed to 
> dangers 
> that endanger them not you?

Who the hell are you to use market leveraging to try to force 
developers to accept licences they don't want that leave their users 
exposed to dangers that endanger them not you?

Really, these linguistic pyrotechnics help no-one.

If you want big invariant adverts required by your copyright licence, 
go ahead. We will not force you to do otherwise, but you cannot force 
us to distribute your software. You could try to persuade us, but 
you've really not done well at that so far. Maybe we've not done well 
at persuading you, but I doubt you had an open mind at the start of 
this discussion, as you already picked that licence for some reason.

I shudder to think how much money-worth has been put into developing 
debian. Trying to intimidate us with the size of your wad seems 
unlikely to work.

> You are trying to create a new rigid orthodoxy to close off license 
> experimentation (long before we have licenses that work well), and 
> like most 
> groups who create such orthodoxies, you are eager to oppress those 
> who do not 
> conform to things you do not deeply understand.

Licence experimentation is cool and froody, but debian should be free 
to make its mind up about what is acceptable to it. They're getting 
quite practised at it now.

I don't want to oppress you. However, you are eager to oppress 
debian's users.

> I hope the FSF sticks to the GFDL and eventually makes GPL V3 
> resemble it. 

I hope they don't.

>> Surely there is! If we (or RedHat) were to do such a thing, our very
>> users and developers would be quite vocal about it, and rightly so.
> They did it and nothing happened to them (except of course that 
> XFree86 4.0 
> changed its license, which is the only way developers can effectively 
> respond 
> to such conduct).

OK, so say RedHat did bad. I don't use RedHat for years, which is the 
only way users can effectively respond. I plan to stop using XFree86 
because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions about 
the licence. I already don't use ReiserFS any more.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

MJ Ray wrote:

[at least 3 insults snipped]

>>> Surely there is! If we (or RedHat) were to do such a thing, our very
>>> users and developers would be quite vocal about it, and rightly so.
>
> On 2004-05-02 22:02:38 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
>>
>> They did it and nothing happened to them (except of course that
>> XFree86 4.0 changed its license, which is the only way developers can
>> effectively respond to such conduct).
> 
> OK, so say RedHat did bad. I don't use RedHat for years, which is the
> only way users can effectively respond. I plan to stop using XFree86
> because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions about
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hey, can you do anything else but insult people?


> the licence. I already don't use ReiserFS any more.

That's your right. Nobody has disputed that.


Carl-Daniel

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1107 bytes --]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:39:27 CDT, David Masover said:

> Not that this needs to be said, but it'd be interesting to watch Debian
> (free) try to remain a distro of anything if they reject some variant of
> the GPL.  They'd certainly have to abandon (or fork) Linux, at least if
> Linux adopted the new version -- and I'm guessing he would, considering
> that he develops (last I checked) on BitKeeper, which is (again, last I
> checked) proprietary.

First off, Linus intentionally fixed the Linux kernel as being 'GPL V2 only' -
to change it to some later version would basically require the assent of all
the copyright holders.  This is generally held to be infeasible in practice...

Secondly, I totally fail to see what the fact that Linus uses BitKeeper has to
do with licensing of the kernel, except to prove that Linus is a pragmatist and
willing to use a non-free-as-in-speech product when there really *is* no
open-source competitor - and unlike the other source code management systems
that *do* compete with BitKeeper, Larry McVoy at least has the 'BKL' for free
use for open-source projects.




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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1214 bytes --]

On Mon, 03 May 2004 09:58:30 +0300, mjt@nysv.org (Markus =?UNKNOWN?Q?T=F6rnqvist?=)  said:

> It's really quite a shame that the best distro around is so rigid
> as to not allow Reiser's minor, and understandable, addition in
> his licensing.

The idiomatic phrase for this is "slippery slope" - it's much easier (and
morally justifiable) to draw a hard line and and say "everybody on that
side of the line goes in non-free" without exceptions.  If you accept Hans'
"minor addition", then you get to fight the "but *my* minor addition isn't
much bigger than Hans', why can't *my* stuff go in free too?" fight for
every single package.

And I will advance the suggestion that the entire "We don't care how many users
we have, we will stick to the highest principles no matter what" philosophy is
a large part of *WHY* Debian is the sort of distribution it is.  Yes, they
probably *could* be less rigid about this issue.  But then they'd lose a large
part of what makes Debian be Debian, rather than some other distribution...

> Wouldn't mkfs -f > /dev/null be adequate suppression?

Redirecting to /dev/null at the time you *MOST* want to be paying very
close attention to everything that's output... Bad idea. :)

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-03 17:35:39 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

>> Copyright notices have
>> a specific place in Debian, and are always placed there.
> Moving them would violate the law.

What law?

>> Furthermore, we expect copyright notices to also indicate the terms
>> under which they are (or are not) licensed.
> The law does not require this, nor does the GPL.

Clause 1 of the GPL requires notices of the GPL to remain AFAICT.

> You as a group are attempting to coerce using the market leverage 
> that Debian 
> genuinely does possess and seems willing and aggressively eager to 
> use.

And you as a person are attempting to use the market leverage that 
ReiserFS genuinely does possess... It's still not a very good forcing 
device.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-03 22:53:05 +0100 Carl-Daniel Hailfinger 
<c-d.hailfinger.kernel.2004@gmx.net> wrote:

> MJ Ray wrote:
>> because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions 
>> about
>                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Hey, can you do anything else but insult people?

I'm not sure what you mean. I've reread the email and I'm surprised 
that you think there are "at least 3 insults" in it. I count one and 
that was an intentional illustration of the unnecessarily insulting 
language it was replying to.

   Dumb \Dumb\, a. [...]

      2. Not willing to speak; mute; silent; not speaking; not
         accompanied by words;

It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to 
questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but 
they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame 
them.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[David Masover]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

BitKeeper has to
| do with licensing of the kernel, except to prove that Linus is a
pragmatist and
| willing to use a non-free-as-in-speech product when there really *is* no
| open-source competitor - and unlike the other source code management
systems
| that *do* compete with BitKeeper, Larry McVoy at least has the 'BKL'
for free
| use for open-source projects.

Still, this is a limitation -- I probably wouldn't use bitkeeper if I
ever started a project.  Note that I say "probably"...

And I can't imagine many people sticking to "free" Debian without having
a very good reason.  If it's being a purist, they would probably be
annoyed at Linus' choice of BitKeeper.  If it's being an open source
developer themself, I'd consider Linus to be an "open source developer"
- -- and I'd marvel that these "open source developers" wouldn't be
pragmatists themselves.

But anyhow, this is getting offtopic enough, and I don't care enough --
I don't use Debian, and I'd use non-free if I did.  I'll let the people
in charge work this out.
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-05-03 22:53:05 +0100 Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
> <c-d.hailfinger.kernel.2004@gmx.net> wrote:
> 
>> MJ Ray wrote:
>>
>>> because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions about
>>
>>                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> Hey, can you do anything else but insult people?
> 
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean. I've reread the email and I'm surprised that
> you think there are "at least 3 insults" in it. I count one and that was
> an intentional illustration of the unnecessarily insulting language it
> was replying to.
> 
>   Dumb \Dumb\, a. [...]
> 
>      2. Not willing to speak; mute; silent; not speaking; not
>         accompanied by words;

I'm sorry to have misunderstood you. The meaning of dumb I was referring
to is slightly different.

Quoting from dictionary.reference.com:
--------------------------------------
dumb    ( P )
adj. dumb·er, dumb·est

1.a Lacking the power of speech. Used of animals and inanimate objects.
1.b Often Offensive. Incapable of using speech; mute. Used of humans. See
    Usage Note at mute.
2. Temporarily speechless, as with shock or fear: I was dumb with disbelief.
3. Unwilling to speak; taciturn.
[...]
6. Conspicuously unintelligent; stupid: dumb officials; a dumb decision.
[...]
Our Living Language In ordinary spoken English, a sentence such as He is
dumb will be interpreted to mean “He is stupid” rather than “He lacks the
power of speech.” “Lacking the power of speech” is, however, the original
sense of the word, but it has been eclipsed by the meaning “stupid.”
--------------------------------------


> It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to
> questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but
> they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame them.

I mistook your phrase "its dumb developers" as referring to all XFree86
developers. Now that you clarified it, it doesn't look like an insult
anymore.

Carl-Daniel

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-03 15:24:00 +0100 Claus Färber <claus@xn--frber-gra.muc.de> wrote:

> Rememer that an "ad-clause" usually does not render a work non-free,
> just incompatible with the GPL. [...]

An "ad-clause" usually applies to documentation or advertising supplied with the software, not the software package itself, and only requires attribution not a large advert. It sails very close to the wind, but doesn't quite fall over.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Markus Törnqvist wrote:

>On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:35:12AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
>
>  
>
>>No, that certainly is an option.  Relocating the credits to somewhere 
>>reasonable for a particular installer is just fine with me.
>>    
>>
>
>Let's see what the Debian people say about showing the complete credits
>in the preinstall screen during interactive installation and scrolling
>through them automatically in a non-interactive one, for example.
>
>I think the response will be "but it's still non-free" :P
>
>  
>
>>>Also, if every software showed their credits, there would easily be a ton
>>>of them.
>>>      
>>>
>>This is bad why?  They could be interesting for users to read while the 
>>install proceeds.
>>    
>>
>
>I wouldn't mind it. However, it could get out of hand if we had
>three-four-five screenfulls of credits during every boot. Then it's time
>to /dev/null again...
>  
>
Well, a really clever way of doing it would have a page describing what 
the program does with a little bit of credits at the bottom.

As a user, I am usually disappointed by how operating systems fail to 
take the opportunity to educate me while I wait for them to install.

>Credits (as commercials and ads and stuff) should never defeat the purpose
>of the entity of which they are a part.
>  
>
I would really like Debian to understand the difference between credits 
and ads.  Credits describe someone's contribution to the project.  Ads 
describe some product for you to buy.  Very different things.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

You miss the point.  I get plenty of credit because of the filesystem 
name.  It is everybody else who gets shortchanged unless we print a 
randomly chosen 1 paragraph credit at mkreiser4 time.

Hans

Chris Dukes wrote:

>On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 08:49:10PM +0300, Markus Törnqvist wrote:
>[SNEEPAGE]
>Perhaps this is overly cynical but...
>In this day and age people only seem to care about proper attribution
>when either
>1) Looking for another garbage novel to read.
>2) Looking for someone to sue.
>
>The former seems to be covered by having the author's name in bigger
>type than the title of the novel.
>The latter, it doesn't matter how well the credits are buried, the
>presumed targets will be served.
>So as a compromise can we have
>hansreiserfs* as the prefix on all packages.
>HANSREISER as the prefix on all executables, kernel symbols, fstypes...
>Frequent use of bold and blink for the text HANS REISER as well.
>
>I don't know about other folks, but the credits filling my terminal
>windows and logs get first dibs on catching the blame on whatever
>may be going wrong with my computer.
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:

>
>  
>
>>It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to
>>questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but
>>they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame them.
>>    
>>
I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot 
grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this 
was wrong.

I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of 
changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a 
response.;-)

Hans

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot 
> grasp 
> that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this 
> was wrong.

That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is 
actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it, 
although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating.

Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a 
condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even 
mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software, I 
have probably failed the letter of the conditions.

It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your code 
non-free because you are not happy with some distributor actions. You 
should work with the distributors instead of accusing them of 
immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last resort, not 
the first.

> I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of 
> changing 
> licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a 
> response.;-)

You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some responses, 
too, as previously mentioned.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable software.  
The two are orthogonal concepts.

Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable.  XFree86 and I 
want our software to be free but not plagiarizable.  In general, I want 
software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the 
societal interest to not attribute accurately.  Saying that plagiarism 
is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must be 
allowed to do if you are to be considered free.

Hans

MJ Ray wrote:

> On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
>
>> I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot 
>> grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and 
>> this was wrong.
>
>
> That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is 
> actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it, 
> although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating.
>
> Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a 
> condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even 
> mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software, I 
> have probably failed the letter of the conditions.
>
> It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your code 
> non-free because you are not happy with some distributor actions. You 
> should work with the distributors instead of accusing them of 
> immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last resort, not 
> the first.
>
>> I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of 
>> changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got 
>> a response.;-)
>
>
> You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some responses, 
> too, as previously mentioned.
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> [2004-05-04 09:20]:
> I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of
> changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got
> a response.;-)

I wonder if you're aware that virtually every distro is moving away
from XFree86.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-04 18:02:28 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable 
> software.

There is a difference between free software and forced-advert 
software, too. There is also the difference between a duck.

> Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable.

Debian has not expressed that view, to the best of my knowledge.

> XFree86 and I want 
> our software to be free but not plagiarizable.

Great! I look forward to you both fixing your licences.

> In general, I want software 
> to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the societal 
> interest to 
> not attribute accurately.

I agree.

> Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is 
> like saying assault is something you must be allowed to do if you are 
> to be 
> considered free.

No-one has said that. You seem to be constructing straw men.

In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest 
licence definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent 
of their advertising clause.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Martin Michlmayr wrote:

>* Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> [2004-05-04 09:20]:
>  
>
>>I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of
>>changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got
>>a response.;-)
>>    
>>
>
>I wonder if you're aware that virtually every distro is moving away
>from XFree86.
>  
>
They don't want to attribute.  It is contrary to the distro brand 
awareness monopilization interest.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

MJ Ray wrote:

>
>
>> XFree86 and I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable.
>
>
> Great! I look forward to you both fixing your licences.

Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable in 
the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.

Assault is the wrong analogy, lying is what plagiarism is.  Having a 
license that prevents lying about who did what is not a restriction on 
freedom any more than laws against fraud restrict freedom of speech.

>
>> In general, I want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it 
>> works against the societal interest to not attribute accurately.
>
>
> I agree.

So support those who do something to stop plagiarism.

>
>> Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is like saying assault 
>> is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free.
>
>
> No-one has said that. You seem to be constructing straw men.
>
> In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest 
> licence definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent 
> of their advertising clause.
>
What problem do you speak of?

And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  Advertisements 
sell products, credits describe who made the project happen.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

When you go to the opera, they don't come on stage and say buy XYZ, but 
they do say something prominent on the brochure like "we thank the 
generous ABC corporation for making this evening happen".  Debian should 
follow that model, it works and is morally right to do.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Martin Dickopp]

Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:

> You miss the point.  I get plenty of credit because of the filesystem
> name.  It is everybody else who gets shortchanged unless we print a
> randomly chosen 1 paragraph credit at mkreiser4 time.

I'm not a Debian developer.  But I don't understand your earlier comment
about attribution in science in the light of this comment.  A typical
attribution in a peer reviewed scientific journal looks like, e.g.,
"B. Aubert et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 121801 (2003)", where the
"et al." represents 600+ people.

Martin

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Brian Thomas Sniffen]

Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:

> There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable
> software.  The two are orthogonal concepts.
>
> Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable.  XFree86 and
> I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable.  In general, I
> want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the
> societal interest to not attribute accurately.  Saying that plagiarism
> is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must
> be allowed to do if you are to be considered free.

No, it is exactly like saying plagiarism is something you must be
allowed to do if you are to be considered free.  If the law prevented
me from making false statements, I would not be free.  My nose is
blue, for example, and frequently emits badgers.  To make that
statement illegal is to restrict my freedom.  It is only a short step
from there to restricting me from saying that two plus two equals four.

Now, *fraud* is illegal -- so there is no need for a copyright license
to inhibit fraud, because it's already a crime.  But for me to have
freedom with respect to an artifact, I must have freedom to change it
in arbitrary ways.  "All ways that do not remove the maker's mark" is
not enough.  Then it is a shared artifact, an open artifact even, but
not a free artifact.

Similarly, to have freedom with respect to a computer program, I must
have freedom to change it.  Required display of certain text is fine
for a shared source program, or an open source program, but it is not
a free program.

-Brian

> Hans
>
> MJ Ray wrote:
>
>> On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who
>>> cannot grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man
>>> pages and this was wrong.
>>
>>
>> That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is
>> actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it,
>> although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating.
>>
>> Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a
>> condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even
>> mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software,
>> I have probably failed the letter of the conditions.
>>
>> It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your
>> code non-free because you are not happy with some distributor
>> actions. You should work with the distributors instead of accusing
>> them of immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last
>> resort, not the first.
>>
>>> I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of
>>> changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I
>>> got a response.;-)
>>
>>
>> You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some
>> responses, too, as previously mentioned.
>>

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable 
> in the 
> view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.

Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The 
bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs 
accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call 
that advert "the credits" then I think you have a different view to 
many people.

> Assault is the wrong analogy, lying is what plagiarism is.

Sure, but you've not shown any of these by debian yet.

> Having a license 
> that prevents lying about who did what is not a restriction on 
> freedom any 
> more than laws against fraud restrict freedom of speech.

Yes, that seems true and saying "you must attribute this to me, not 
you" would be fine, if redundant. Putting in the licence "you must 
include this report of a conversation between Hans Reiser and his 
lawyer" would not really prevent lying about who did what.

>> I agree.
> So support those who do something to stop plagiarism.

I do. I also support those who do things to promote free software.

>> In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest 
>> licence 
>> definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent of 
>> their 
>> advertising clause.
> What problem do you speak of?

Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, 
even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false 
statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've 
not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet.

> And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  
> Advertisements sell 
> products, credits describe who made the project happen.

No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to 
acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to 
appear.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Joe Wreschnig]

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On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 12:54, Hans Reiser wrote:
> When you go to the opera, they don't come on stage and say buy XYZ, but 
> they do say something prominent on the brochure like "we thank the 
> generous ABC corporation for making this evening happen".  Debian should 
> follow that model, it works and is morally right to do.

This is a very good analogy.

Debian will happily print your credits in our "brochure"
(/usr/share/doc/*reiser*/copyright), which is an optional read for
people who want to see the opera (use the ReiserFS software). We'll even
do it prominently, all caps, whatever. But we will not walk out on stage
(print messages during use of the software) to advertise your
filesystem.

We do follow that model, it does work, and it is the right thing to do.
-- 
Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Jeremy Hankins]

I think a bit of confusion's developed as to just what people are
after.  That's silly & stupid, so I'm going to try to be very precise
(anal, even) about language in this message.  Be warned.  ;)

Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> writes:

> There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable
> software.  The two are orthogonal concepts.

We're not talking about plagiarizing software.  That's when someone
claims to have written someone else's code.  That's silly, and wrong,
and probably against the law without even considering the license.
That's not what you want this license to prevent -- not least because it
does absolutely nothing to prevent it.

The question d-l has is: what *are* you trying to achieve?  Because
there are two possibilities (given that we consider the license as
written non-free):

- You're trying to achieve something we consider non-free.  This isn't a
  terribly interesting case -- your software can't go into debian main.
  Nothing personal, we're just following our social contract.

- Your goal isn't, in itself, non-free.  This is the interesting case,
  because it means that we're not communicating well, and we don't
  understand your license.  Likely, this means that the wording of the
  license could be improved.

So what are you trying to accomplish?  Based on what I've read of this
thread, I can see a few possibilities:

- You don't want people to plagiarize your software.  I.e., you don't
  want folks like me to claim to have written it.

- You want to make sure that information about who contributed
  (financially and/or intellectually) to ReiserFS is readily available,
  so that folks who want to know can find out.

- You want to make sure that people know who contributed to ReiserFS
  regardless of whether or not they are interested in finding out.

The first two options are fine, depending on how they're implemented.
If that's what you want, I'm sure we can hash out wording for the
license that would satisfy both you and d-l.

A couple comments (that I may not be remembering properly) seemed to
imply that these credits are part of a revenue generating model.  Folks
who wish to require users to see their name in conjunction with ReiserFS
may purchase this control over what ReiserFS users see (i.e., they can
purchase an ad -- the first TV ads worked exactly like this, that's why
the word "sponsor" is used to refer to ad purchasers).  If this is the
case, and you are using the license to implement this control (i.e.,
option three above), then I think it's clear that you intend your
license to work exactly as it appears to, and restrict users' freedom.

If this is your goal (or perhaps some other variant on item 3 above)
I don't think you're going to have much luck convincing folks on d-l
that your license is Free.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03

RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Burnes, James]

It disturbs me that such a great piece of software engineering like
ReiserV3 and V4 is sullied by licensing arguments about whether someone
is going to plagiarize them.

I imagine that nearly all software engineers would be horrified at the
thought of stealing the Reiser3 and 4 code and representing them as
their own.  It would be tantamount to a random civil engineer trotting
the blueprints to the Golden Gate bridge out as their own design.  The
social and professional repercussions would be immediate, highly
negative and totally incompatible with the motivation for contributing
to FOSS systems.

I'd like to get an idea of what the major concerns are surrounding
"plagiarism" and FOSS.

l. Is it that you believe the John Q Software is going to rip off your
software and represent it as their own work.  That would be plagiarism
and I think very very rare in the FOSS community.

2. Are you unhappy with the fact that a few of the major distros are
charging money for support and representing the software itself as their
own creation?  Wouldn't that already be in contravention of GPL V2?  Are
you unhappy with the fact that some distros make *a lot* of money and
fail to credit the FOSS people that made it possible?  Arguably the
market determines whether their support and package integration are
worthy of financial support, just as the DOD determines whether V4 is
worth of their support.  The relative discrepancy in reward vs. effort
is an economic discussion beyond the scope of this.

3. Is it that you simply want an efficient mechanism for cataloging
efforts of the major contributors to a project?  If that's the case why
don't we just come up with some sort of credits standard to be macro
embedded in the binaries?  That way anyone could view the credits by
running a 'credits' shell command against the binary/library/kernel etc.
Obviously the macros would be viewable in source.

4. How about this for a self-referential solution to the problem.  In
ReiserV4, you could view the ReiserV4 credits by simply looking at the
credits meta properties in reiser4.o or any other software.  Sounds like
a good idea for a plugin or default behavior.  The ability to view
credits like this might make software engineers recommend V4 for this
reason alone.   ;-)

5. It would probably be easy enough to put hooks in the Gnome and KDE
help subsystems so that the Help/Credits menu item would scan the binary
for attributions.

6. I've said this before, but if the 'credits' program doesn't find the
exact 'attributions' structure in the binary, it can do a multi-part
diff/MD5 and then match it to the closest known version.  This algorithm
might be similar to the rsync or advanced binary diff algorithms.  That
way if there are no attribution macros or someone intentionally strips
or alters attributions you could track it.  I'm sure some digital
signature technique could be used to guarantee non-alteration.  What if
the team members each digitally signed the their source modules?

Anyway, these are all possible technical solutions to a human problem.
People would like attribution for the hard work they do.  Naturally.

Is there a better mechanism?

Hopefully the issue doesn't devolve into an argument about forcing
people to read the credits, nagware like, during the execution of the
code.  That would simply not scale at all and would aggressively
de-select your software free or otherwise from an open environment.

Think about it,

(1) Everytime the kernel invokes kmod, the kmod team brays about how
great they are.
(2) Everytime someone opens a dynamic library, it shouts about how great
it is.
(3) Everytime your email program starts up, it delays for 20 seconds
while it advertises for the team.  Of course if you buy support, this
message goes away.  Hmmm....
(4) Everytime a particular SMTP service starts up it announces it's
version and a random contributor.  For people trying to hack into
systems, this is very bad as it can be used to determine whether there
are vulnerabilities.
(5) By this time, we begin experiencing a very low coefficient of static
friction on the development slope.

There has to be a better way, or FOSS software wouldn't exist.

In short, can you guys give some real examples where developers
intentions have been abused or are likely to be abused by GPL V2?

Thanks,

jim burnes


 

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[mjt]

On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 08:50:26AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:

>I would really like Debian to understand the difference between credits 
>and ads.  Credits describe someone's contribution to the project.  Ads 
>describe some product for you to buy.  Very different things.

However, in excess they can get in the way.
Much like ads.

It's one thing that everyone should have the right to have their credits
displayed and actually doing it.

Let's see if I can explain it. I understand and accept the mkfs.reiser4
method. Just as the few email addressess and names during the boot. In those
I would even accept a clause that they should not be removed. Besides, they
apparently don't annoy people because they're there.

I don't think anyone wants to see their names shouted so much that they
would enfore credits on every insmod. I'm sure they would get annoyed with
it themselves, having to look at everyone's credits.

So the optimal situation would be that people have the right to get credited,
also have the right to enfore the showing of the credits, but they would also
have the right not to overdo it or simply choose not to use this right.

There would also be hell to pay if every execution of ls shouted the core
utils crew and this would lead the crew to rethink their crediting strategy
when new ls implementations start popping out.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Michael Milverton]

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On Wed, 5 May 2004 03:18 am, Burnes, James wrote:
> It disturbs me that such a great piece of software engineering like
> ReiserV3 and V4 is sullied by licensing arguments about whether someone
> is going to plagiarize them.
>
> I imagine that nearly all software engineers would be horrified at the
> thought of stealing the Reiser3 and 4 code and representing them as
> their own.  It would be tantamount to a random civil engineer trotting
> the blueprints to the Golden Gate bridge out as their own design.  The
> social and professional repercussions would be immediate, highly
> negative and totally incompatible with the motivation for contributing
> to FOSS systems.
>
You don't have to steal the code, all you have to do is rename mkreiser4* to 
mkMY_COMPANY. This is a problem and people are already essentially doing this 
with KDE. Companies have changed the K to something else. Now for an ignorant 
end user who has never seen the K in on the kde start menu, they may end up 
believing that company X created the desktop environment they are using, 
first impressions count.

> I'd like to get an idea of what the major concerns are surrounding
> "plagiarism" and FOSS.
>
> l. Is it that you believe the John Q Software is going to rip off your
> software and represent it as their own work.  That would be plagiarism
> and I think very very rare in the FOSS community.
This is already happening with KDE on RH and others.
>
> 2. Are you unhappy with the fact that a few of the major distros are
> charging money for support and representing the software itself as their
> own creation?  Wouldn't that already be in contravention of GPL V2?  Are
> you unhappy with the fact that some distros make *a lot* of money and
> fail to credit the FOSS people that made it possible?  Arguably the
> market determines whether their support and package integration are
> worthy of financial support, just as the DOD determines whether V4 is
> worth of their support.  The relative discrepancy in reward vs. effort
> is an economic discussion beyond the scope of this.
>
> 3. Is it that you simply want an efficient mechanism for cataloging
> efforts of the major contributors to a project?  If that's the case why
> don't we just come up with some sort of credits standard to be macro
> embedded in the binaries?  That way anyone could view the credits by
> running a 'credits' shell command against the binary/library/kernel etc.
> Obviously the macros would be viewable in source.
Hans holds the view that people won't choose to look at the credits or who the 
sponsors are. I think this is true becaue users are lazy ( including 
myself ). This means that if users have to look at something to do something 
then they probably won't. Maybe users need to be motivated to look at the 
credits, eg looking at the credits will benefit them in some way? How?, I do 
not know yet but maybe it needs a bit of creative thinking. 
>
> 4. How about this for a self-referential solution to the problem.  In
> ReiserV4, you could view the ReiserV4 credits by simply looking at the
> credits meta properties in reiser4.o or any other software.  Sounds like
> a good idea for a plugin or default behavior.  The ability to view
> credits like this might make software engineers recommend V4 for this
> reason alone.   ;-)
>
> 5. It would probably be easy enough to put hooks in the Gnome and KDE
> help subsystems so that the Help/Credits menu item would scan the binary
> for attributions.
>
> 6. I've said this before, but if the 'credits' program doesn't find the
> exact 'attributions' structure in the binary, it can do a multi-part
> diff/MD5 and then match it to the closest known version.  This algorithm
> might be similar to the rsync or advanced binary diff algorithms.  That
> way if there are no attribution macros or someone intentionally strips
> or alters attributions you could track it.  I'm sure some digital
> signature technique could be used to guarantee non-alteration.  What if
> the team members each digitally signed the their source modules?
>
> Anyway, these are all possible technical solutions to a human problem.
> People would like attribution for the hard work they do.  Naturally.
>
> Is there a better mechanism?
>
> Hopefully the issue doesn't devolve into an argument about forcing
> people to read the credits, nagware like, during the execution of the
> code.  That would simply not scale at all and would aggressively
> de-select your software free or otherwise from an open environment.
>
> Think about it,
>
> (1) Everytime the kernel invokes kmod, the kmod team brays about how
> great they are.
> (2) Everytime someone opens a dynamic library, it shouts about how great
> it is.
> (3) Everytime your email program starts up, it delays for 20 seconds
> while it advertises for the team.  Of course if you buy support, this
> message goes away.  Hmmm....
> (4) Everytime a particular SMTP service starts up it announces it's
> version and a random contributor.  For people trying to hack into
> systems, this is very bad as it can be used to determine whether there
> are vulnerabilities.
> (5) By this time, we begin experiencing a very low coefficient of static
> friction on the development slope.
I think some of these concerns are legitimate because of the sheer number of 
programs that are in a Free OS. Crediting is not bad but in the end the sheer 
number of programs would either need to do it in a consistent manner or it 
would end up chaotic.
>
> There has to be a better way, or FOSS software wouldn't exist.
I feel that there is really two issues here. One is changing the name of 
reiserfs and the other is credits. The first one I feel that Hans is spot on 
in requiring people not to change the name of the program, because otherwise 
it will probably eventually happen. Now the credits issue is more complicated 
than this because it is less clean in its implementation and more likley to 
be viewed as a problem by more people and I do not know if there is a 
solution that would suit everyone.
>
> In short, can you guys give some real examples where developers
> intentions have been abused or are likely to be abused by GPL V2?
>
> Thanks,
>
> jim burnes

-- 
GNU/Linux: Secure, Stable, Free
Michael <camel78@iprimus.com.au>

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[mjt]

On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 11:11:16AM +0800, Michael Milverton wrote:

>> There has to be a better way, or FOSS software wouldn't exist.
>I feel that there is really two issues here. One is changing the name of 
>reiserfs and the other is credits. The first one I feel that Hans is spot on 
>in requiring people not to change the name of the program, because otherwise 
>it will probably eventually happen. Now the credits issue is more complicated 
>than this because it is less clean in its implementation and more likley to 
>be viewed as a problem by more people and I do not know if there is a 
>solution that would suit everyone.

The world would indeed be a better place if Hans put simply a REQUEST not
to change the name, and a request to show the credits during installation,
were it make install, dpkg -i, rpm -Uvh, tar xzf (Is there a way of showing
text when unzipping a tarball?) or whatever.

Also if this was sufficient.

I would personally oblige to this request at any time, I even prefer it
(of course) far over showing the credits "by force."

I would also take a giant shit on the distro that would not oblige so minor
a request, as anyone who puts money in free software is doing a good thing
and not to pay respect is.. disrespectful.

Maybe if these were just requests, the community would ensure that these
requests go through? Oh, and everyone would boycott RedHat while sending
them petitions if they start messing around.

This would be the Occam's razory thing to do until someone pops out a
license that accepts "forcing" of credits. Or maybe such a license would
be rendered obsolete by the nice people in the community.

-- 
mjt

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[David Masover]

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Hash: SHA1


First and foremost:  Hans, this is your project.  Someone willing to
replace entire APIs with things that feel like files is obviously not
afraid of creating something new.  So at the end of the day, it
shouldn't matter too much that it's in Debian Non-free, especially if
(assuming I heard correctly) XFree86 is also non-free.

But that's also your decision -- if you want to "allow plagarism",
that's also up to you.  I certainly can't make the call -- I'm just a kid[1]

Furthermore, I don't care how many credits you flash, as long as it
doesn't start lagging my ssh connections or creating huge logs.

It's important that credits be there.  However, as long as they can be
found by experienced users looking for them, and aren't actively hidden
("dark side of the moon" could be a lot farther away than
/usr/share/doc/reiser4-<version>/README.gz, considering that everyone
knows to look there).

It's not important that everyone see the credits, unless someone has a
severe case of vanity.  The only reason I can think of to force everyone
to see the credits without asking is to make Hans Reiser (and perhaps
the other <100 people who see the source) a household name.

What's important is that it's always possible to find the credits.  This
allows individuals to refer to those credits when searching for a new
job (or new funding, or a TV spot, whatever).  When I see credits flash
by my face, if I see the same name enough times, I might remember it.
Otherwise, it's only when I'm obsessive, or it's a single name.  I will
remember Hans anyway, because he's in the name.  I usually remember the
names of lead actors.  But I don't remember the names of the cameraman
in scene five, and it's unlikely if I did that I'd seriously consider
seeing another movie just because he shot a scene in it.

For the cameraman, it's really only important when someone's making a
new movie and they want a cameraman who's experienced in a particular
style.  Maybe I'm over-dramatizing, but if I hacked on reiser4, I'd be
in a similar circumstance -- I don't care if John Q. Public sees my
name, but maybe later I'd start my own project, and I'd refer to the
credits.

<offtopic level="slightly">
As for flashing info during the install, I'd rather have an actual pager
available on the same screen as the progress bar.  I've watched some
programs take so long to install that it showed me "You can use this
online, too!" or similar for half an hour.  On newer, faster machines,
I've seen programs install so fast that I just got a blur of
information.  The pager lets me read at my pace, as well as at my
machine's pace.
</offtopic>

Debian people:  If so many things are non-free, I say you need to either
relax or create some subclasses of non-free.  I like the reiser license,
I don't like the java license, and so I don't put java on until I have
to, but I put reiser on first (especially considering I have v4 as root
on one box).  It should be possible for the distro to make that choice
available.  And I speak of the "non-free" distro, since the "free" group
seems to turn up their noses at anything that doesn't make the cut.


That is the last you will hear from me on this subject (so reply to the
lists instead).  I don't currently have a girlfriend, and if I intend to
change that, I won't spend any more time ranting about what to do with a
list of names and email addresses.





[1]  I am 17, and will be 18 in January.  At some point I'll have to
stop flaunting my youth, but right now, I jump over multiple chairs on
every snack raid from my computer.

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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

MJ Ray wrote:

> On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
>
>> Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable 
>> in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.
>
>
> Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The 
> bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs 
> accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call 
> that advert "the credits" then I think you have a different view to 
> many people.

Show me the line in those credits where it said "buy Coca-Cola cheaper 
here".  They were credits, not advertisements.

>
> Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, 
> even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false 
> statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've 
> not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet.

Can you supply their full verbatim phrasing so that we can discuss it 
accurately? I'd like to understand whether your characterization is correct.

>
>> And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  
>> Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project 
>> happen.
>
>
> No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to 
> acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to 
> appear.
>
You seem to understand the difference between credit and advertisement 
as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.  If they are 
putting their name on their software or its documentation, then surely 
it is a credit not an advertisement.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Joe Wreschnig wrote:

>On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 12:54, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>When you go to the opera, they don't come on stage and say buy XYZ, but 
>>they do say something prominent on the brochure like "we thank the 
>>generous ABC corporation for making this evening happen".  Debian should 
>>follow that model, it works and is morally right to do.
>>    
>>
>
>This is a very good analogy.
>
>Debian will happily print your credits in our "brochure"
>(/usr/share/doc/*reiser*/copyright), which is an optional read for
>people who want to see the opera (use the ReiserFS software). We'll even
>do it prominently, all caps, whatever. But we will not walk out on stage
>(print messages during use of the software) to advertise your
>filesystem.
>  
>
Reiser4 prints them when you make a new filesystem, not when you use the 
filesystem.  We are not as aggressive as you imagine.  While I do 
personally think that boot time credits should be returned to existence, 
I am not asking for that.

>We do follow that model, it does work, and it is the right thing to do.
>  
>
Operas put the credits where they get seen.  Where a contributor is 
really significant to it happening, a theater group (little league 
baseball game, etc.) will mention on stage sometimes.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Nikita Danilov]

Hans Reiser writes:
 > MJ Ray wrote:
 > 
 > > On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
 > >
 > >> Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable 
 > >> in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.
 > >
 > >
 > > Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The 
 > > bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs 
 > > accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call 
 > > that advert "the credits" then I think you have a different view to 
 > > many people.
 > 
 > Show me the line in those credits where it said "buy Coca-Cola cheaper 
 > here".  They were credits, not advertisements.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
...
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....
----------------------------------------------------------------------

If these are credits, then Coca-cola is gpled. This is just _noise_,
spewed on each invocation.

 > 
 > >
 > > Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, 
 > > even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false 
 > > statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've 
 > > not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet.
 > 
 > Can you supply their full verbatim phrasing so that we can discuss it 
 > accurately? I'd like to understand whether your characterization is correct.
 > 
 > >
 > >> And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  
 > >> Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project 
 > >> happen.
 > >
 > >
 > > No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to 
 > > acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to 
 > > appear.
 > >
 > You seem to understand the difference between credit and advertisement 
 > as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.  If they are 
 > putting their name on their software or its documentation, then surely 
 > it is a credit not an advertisement.

Nikita.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

A typical example:

/sbin/mkreiserfs -V
mkreiserfs 3.6.9 (2003 www.namesys.com)

A pair of credits:
Alexander Zarochentcev  (zam)  wrote the high low priority locking code, 
online
resizer for V3 and V4, online repacker for V4, block allocation code, 
and major
parts of  the flush code,  and maintains the transaction manager code.  
We give
him the stuff  that we know will be hard to debug,  or needs to be very 
cleanly
structured.

BigStorage  (www.bigstorage.com)  contributes to our general fund  every 
month,
and has done so for quite a long time.

Nikita Danilov wrote:

>Hans Reiser writes:
> > MJ Ray wrote:
> > 
> > > On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable 
> > >> in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.
> > >
> > >
> > > Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The 
> > > bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs 
> > > accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call 
> > > that advert "the credits" then I think you have a different view to 
> > > many people.
> > 
> > Show me the line in those credits where it said "buy Coca-Cola cheaper 
> > here".  They were credits, not advertisements.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>...
>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....
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>If these are credits, then Coca-cola is gpled. This is just _noise_,
>spewed on each invocation.
>  
>
Hmmm.  Ok, you are right, I should change the wording of that.

> > 
> > >
> > > Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, 
> > > even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false 
> > > statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've 
> > > not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet.
> > 
> > Can you supply their full verbatim phrasing so that we can discuss it 
> > accurately? I'd like to understand whether your characterization is correct.
> > 
> > >
> > >> And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  
> > >> Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project 
> > >> happen.
> > >
> > >
> > > No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to 
> > > acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to 
> > > appear.
> > >
> > You seem to understand the difference between credit and advertisement 
> > as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.  If they are 
> > putting their name on their software or its documentation, then surely 
> > it is a credit not an advertisement.
>
>Nikita.
>
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Vitaly, change the paragraph Nikita complained of to:

Continuing core development of ReiserFS 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.  We
thank those anonymous companies.  Hans Reiser and Namesys also perform
consulting to companies who miscellaneous kernel work done, and we thank 
those
companies also.

Nikita Danilov wrote:

>Hans Reiser writes:
> > MJ Ray wrote:
> > 
> > > On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable.  GPL V2 is plagiarizable 
> > >> in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits.
> > >
> > >
> > > Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The 
> > > bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs 
> > > accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call 
> > > that advert "the credits" then I think you have a different view to 
> > > many people.
> > 
> > Show me the line in those credits where it said "buy Coca-Cola cheaper 
> > here".  They were credits, not advertisements.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>...
>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....
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>If these are credits, then Coca-cola is gpled. This is just _noise_,
>spewed on each invocation.
>  
>
Those sales make it possible every once in a long while to pay salaries....

> > 
> > >
> > > Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, 
> > > even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false 
> > > statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've 
> > > not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet.
> > 
> > Can you supply their full verbatim phrasing so that we can discuss it 
> > accurately? I'd like to understand whether your characterization is correct.
> > 
> > >
> > >> And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause.  
> > >> Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project 
> > >> happen.
> > >
> > >
> > > No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to 
> > > acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to 
> > > appear.
> > >
> > You seem to understand the difference between credit and advertisement 
> > as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.  If they are 
> > putting their name on their software or its documentation, then surely 
> > it is a credit not an advertisement.
>
>Nikita.
>
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Jeremy Hankins wrote:

>
>A couple comments (that I may not be remembering properly) seemed to
>imply that these credits are part of a revenue generating model.  Folks
>who wish to require users to see their name in conjunction with ReiserFS
>may purchase this control over what ReiserFS users see (i.e., they can
>purchase an ad -- the first TV ads worked exactly like this, that's why
>the word "sponsor" is used to refer to ad purchasers).  If this is the
>case, and you are using the license to implement this control (i.e.,
>option three above), then I think it's clear that you intend your
>license to work exactly as it appears to, and restrict users' freedom.
>
>If this is your goal (or perhaps some other variant on item 3 above)
>I don't think you're going to have much luck convincing folks on d-l
>that your license is Free.
>
>  
>
Please consider my distinction between a credit (public television in 
the USA has them), and an ad (for profit broadcast television has them).

I don't find the credits annoying, I don't like the ads.  Maybe the 
broadcasters could make more effort to make the ads less annoying and 
more informative, but their sense of civic duty is too lacking.

I do like well funded television shows.....

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Chris Dukes]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 12:34:46PM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Please consider my distinction between a credit (public television in 
> the USA has them), and an ad (for profit broadcast television has them).

Both are ads.  One just makes a poor attempt at failing to mention an
actual product making a credit on PBS nearly indistinguishable from
most pharmeceutical commercials.
> 
> I don't find the credits annoying, I don't like the ads.  Maybe the 
> broadcasters could make more effort to make the ads less annoying and 
> more informative, but their sense of civic duty is too lacking.
> 
> I do like well funded television shows.....

Maybe if you'd watch more television instead of trying to be a lawyer
this thread could have died long ago.

I'll be blunt.
Your current shenanigans, including the misuse of the term plagiarism,
discourage me from recommending reiserfs and to strongly contemplate
removing it from systems I am responsible for.
I suspect that others have well, they just haven't bothered to tell you.

Your desire to advertise, advertise, and advertise runs contrary to the
Unix philosophy of "Don't output a damn thing if it ran right, and 
frequently don't output a damn thing if it failed miserably."
I don't want to see your parp.

Your desire to tinker with the license flies in the face of the GPL.

If you're so damned sure that your desire to put advertising in the code
is right and won't alienate your users, get a lawyer that does software
licenses to draw up one to your specifications and kindly shut up until
you 
1) Get the license drafted
2) Get all of the reiserfs copyright holders to sign off on using the license.

As an alternative, perhaps you could talk with Theo DeRaadt about porting
Reiserfs to OpenBSD.

-- 
Chris Dukes
Been there, done that, got the slightly-charred t-shirt. -- Crowder

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Chris Dukes wrote:

>
>2) Get all of the reiserfs copyright holders to sign off on using the license.
>  
>
I have licensing rights to all of reiserfs in all versions.

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Chris Dukes]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 12:54:22PM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Chris Dukes wrote:
> 
> >
> >2) Get all of the reiserfs copyright holders to sign off on using the 
> >license.
> > 
> >
> I have licensing rights to all of reiserfs in all versions.

You do not have copyright on code contributions that came from outside
of namesys, unless the copyright was released to you by the author.

You currently have licensing rights under GPL2 over all of that code.

As I said, shutup and talk with a lawyer.

-- 
Chris Dukes
Been there, done that, got the slightly-charred t-shirt. -- Crowder

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Chris Dukes wrote:

>On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 12:54:22PM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
>  
>
>>Chris Dukes wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>2) Get all of the reiserfs copyright holders to sign off on using the 
>>>license.
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I have licensing rights to all of reiserfs in all versions.
>>    
>>
>
>You do not have copyright on code contributions that came from outside
>of namesys, unless the copyright was released to you by the author.
>  
>
It was.  Lawyer wrote the agreements.  Please go away.

>You currently have licensing rights under GPL2 over all of that code.
>
>As I said, shutup and talk with a lawyer.
>
>  
>

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-06 19:53:10 +0100 Hans Reiser <reiser@namesys.com> wrote:

> Show me the line in those credits where it said "buy Coca-Cola 
> cheaper here". 
> They were credits, not advertisements.

Someone else has given the most extreme example of this. I thank them.

> Can you supply their full verbatim phrasing so that we can discuss it 
> accurately? I'd like to understand whether your characterization is 
> correct.

Please take it up in an XFree86 thread. It has little to do with your 
problems.

> You seem to understand the difference between credit and 
> advertisement as 
> advertisements are credits for those you dislike.

You seem to understand the difference between modification and 
plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike because it 
doesn't praise you enough.

> If they are putting their 
> name on their software or its documentation, then surely it is a 
> credit not 
> an advertisement.

They are putting their name in other people's software and 
documentation too.

I thank others for continuing to point out your errors. I have a 
conference schedule to organise and papers to write, which are both 
preferable to a seemingly endless debate with an extremely hostile 
opponent of debian contributors.

I really hope that other filesystems replace yours if you won't get 
clue.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Brian Thomas Sniffen]

MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:

>> You seem to understand the difference between credit and
>> advertisement as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.
>
> You seem to understand the difference between modification and
> plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike because it
> doesn't praise you enough.

To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.  Some of
them are credits *and* ads, and at least one is an ad for work for
Hans Reiser and Namesys, but they are credits as well, and most of
them for other people.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-05-07 00:21:32 +0100 Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> 
wrote:

> MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
>> You seem to understand the difference between modification and
>> plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike because 
>> it
>> doesn't praise you enough.
> To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.

Please excuse my bad phrasing. That last "you" was "reiserfs 
developers" or similar. As I said, I am busy. Not an excuse, but an 
explanation.

-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:

>MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>>You seem to understand the difference between credit and
>>>advertisement as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.
>>>      
>>>
>>You seem to understand the difference between modification and
>>plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike because it
>>doesn't praise you enough.
>>    
>>
>
>To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.  Some of
>them are credits *and* ads, and at least one is an ad for work for
>Hans Reiser and Namesys, but they are credits as well, and most of
>them for other people.
>
>-Brian
>
>  
>
I could be talked into eliminating the one for me, though I have always 
found it a bit of a pain that people
are a bit eager to think that I am some sort of businessman who hired 
russians because he wasn't abstractly inclined himself.  They seem to 
think I am some sort of businessman fool enough to invest into free 
software, rather than a guy who wanted to build something and couldn't 
get anyone to fund it so he paid for reiserfs to come into existence by 
working a day job for 5.5 years.  They often don't realize that I am 
responsible for basic architectural features, like the idea of 
aggregating small files together rather than always page aligning them, 
or that the most controversial deep design changes of V4 versus V3 were 
mine. 

Probably the current one mentioning me needs more work, as it doesn't 
really say all this, sigh.

RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Dawson, Larry]

Hans Reiser wrote
 
> Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> 
> >MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>>You seem to understand the difference between credit and
> >>>advertisement as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>You seem to understand the difference between modification and
> >>plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike 
> because it
> >>doesn't praise you enough.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.  Some of
> >them are credits *and* ads, and at least one is an ad for work for
> >Hans Reiser and Namesys, but they are credits as well, and most of
> >them for other people.
> >
> >-Brian
> >
> >  
> >
> I could be talked into eliminating the one for me, though I 
> have always 
> found it a bit of a pain that people
> are a bit eager to think that I am some sort of businessman who hired 
> russians because he wasn't abstractly inclined himself.  They seem to 
> think I am some sort of businessman fool enough to invest into free 
> software, rather than a guy who wanted to build something and 
> couldn't 
> get anyone to fund it so he paid for reiserfs to come into 
> existence by 
> working a day job for 5.5 years.  They often don't realize that I am 
> responsible for basic architectural features, like the idea of 
> aggregating small files together rather than always page 
> aligning them, 
> or that the most controversial deep design changes of V4 
> versus V3 were 
> mine. 

Personally, when I read the info on Namesys.com I assumed Hans
had designed pretty much all of Reiser 4. It was only later when I read (I can't remember precisely where) a page where Hans credited members of his team that I knew that others had contributed a lot. I will continue to credit Hans with a massive contribution to filesystem theory and practise. Credit for their work should be given freely :-)
Looking at a couple of lines of information about contributers each time I use ReiserFS progs is just not a problem for me - but it also seems plain to me that restricting changes to the source means that they cannot be put in debian. The license restriction is not compatible with the GPL.
Since the actual Reiser4 filesystem is fully free and GPL licensed, can debian include it without the Reiser programs? If some one wants to write GPL compatible reiserfs progs later then all is available "free" - so this does not seem to put the debian social contract in a complete bind. For now, obviously, a user is going to have to use the non-gpl-compatible (and hence non-debian) utilities to create a filesystem, and contributers to it will be credited.
 
> Probably the current one mentioning me needs more work, as it doesn't 
> really say all this, sigh.
 

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Hans Reiser]

Dawson, Larry wrote:

>Hans Reiser wrote
> 
>  
>
>>Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>>You seem to understand the difference between credit and
>>>>>advertisement as advertisements are credits for those you dislike.
>>>>>     
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>You seem to understand the difference between modification and
>>>>plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike 
>>>>        
>>>>
>>because it
>>    
>>
>>>>doesn't praise you enough.
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.  Some of
>>>them are credits *and* ads, and at least one is an ad for work for
>>>Hans Reiser and Namesys, but they are credits as well, and most of
>>>them for other people.
>>>
>>>-Brian
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I could be talked into eliminating the one for me, though I 
>>have always 
>>found it a bit of a pain that people
>>are a bit eager to think that I am some sort of businessman who hired 
>>russians because he wasn't abstractly inclined himself.  They seem to 
>>think I am some sort of businessman fool enough to invest into free 
>>software, rather than a guy who wanted to build something and 
>>couldn't 
>>get anyone to fund it so he paid for reiserfs to come into 
>>existence by 
>>working a day job for 5.5 years.  They often don't realize that I am 
>>responsible for basic architectural features, like the idea of 
>>aggregating small files together rather than always page 
>>aligning them, 
>>or that the most controversial deep design changes of V4 
>>versus V3 were 
>>mine. 
>>    
>>
>
>Personally, when I read the info on Namesys.com I assumed Hans
>had designed pretty much all of Reiser 4.
>
Most people don't read Namesys.com, they only know about the name of the 
filesystem, and the credits are very much needed in mkreiser4 to inform 
them.  In those credits, I am just one of the randomly chosen 
developers/sponsors.

Probably I should put the developer credits somewhere on the namesys 
main page rather than just under the developers button.  Thanks for 
pointing that out.

> It was only later when I read (I can't remember precisely where) a page where Hans credited members of his team that I knew that others had contributed a lot. I will continue to credit Hans with a massive contribution to filesystem theory and practise. Credit for their work should be given freely :-)
>Looking at a couple of lines of information about contributers each time I use ReiserFS progs is just not a problem for me - but it also seems plain to me that restricting changes to the source means that they cannot be put in debian. The license restriction is not compatible with the GPL.
>Since the actual Reiser4 filesystem is fully free and GPL licensed, can debian include it without the Reiser programs? If some one wants to write GPL compatible reiserfs progs later then all is available "free" - so this does not seem to put the debian social contract in a complete bind. For now, obviously, a user is going to have to use the non-gpl-compatible (and hence non-debian) utilities to create a filesystem, and contributers to it will be credited.
>  
>
Do you really think that there exists some moron willing to spend 4-5 
man-years just so that debian can freely eliminate mention of who built 
reiser4?

> 
>  
>
>>Pr
>>
>  
>

RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Dawson, Larry]

Hans Reiser wrote
> 
> Dawson, Larry wrote:
> 
> >Hans Reiser wrote
> > 
> >  
> >
> >>Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >>>MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
> >>>
> >>> 
> >>>
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>>>>You seem to understand the difference between credit and
> >>>>>advertisement as advertisements are credits for those 
> you dislike.
> >>>>>     
> >>>>>
> >>>>>          
> >>>>>
> >>>>You seem to understand the difference between modification and
> >>>>plagiarism as plagiarism is a modification that you dislike 
> >>>>        
> >>>>
> >>because it
> >>    
> >>
> >>>>doesn't praise you enough.
> >>>>   
> >>>>
> >>>>        
> >>>>
> >>>To be fair, these credits really do seem to be for others.  Some of
> >>>them are credits *and* ads, and at least one is an ad for work for
> >>>Hans Reiser and Namesys, but they are credits as well, and most of
> >>>them for other people.
> >>>
> >>>-Brian
> >>>
> >>> 
> >>>
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>I could be talked into eliminating the one for me, though I 
> >>have always 
> >>found it a bit of a pain that people
> >>are a bit eager to think that I am some sort of businessman 
> who hired 
> >>russians because he wasn't abstractly inclined himself.  
> They seem to 
> >>think I am some sort of businessman fool enough to invest into free 
> >>software, rather than a guy who wanted to build something and 
> >>couldn't 
> >>get anyone to fund it so he paid for reiserfs to come into 
> >>existence by 
> >>working a day job for 5.5 years.  They often don't realize 
> that I am 
> >>responsible for basic architectural features, like the idea of 
> >>aggregating small files together rather than always page 
> >>aligning them, 
> >>or that the most controversial deep design changes of V4 
> >>versus V3 were 
> >>mine. 
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Personally, when I read the info on Namesys.com I assumed Hans
> >had designed pretty much all of Reiser 4.
> >
> Most people don't read Namesys.com, they only know about the 
> name of the 
> filesystem, and the credits are very much needed in mkreiser4 
> to inform 
> them.  In those credits, I am just one of the randomly chosen 
> developers/sponsors.
> 
> Probably I should put the developer credits somewhere on the namesys 
> main page rather than just under the developers button.  Thanks for 
> pointing that out.
> 
> > It was only later when I read (I can't remember precisely 
> where) a page where Hans credited members of his team that I 
> knew that others had contributed a lot. I will continue to 
> credit Hans with a massive contribution to filesystem theory 
> and practise. Credit for their work should be given freely :-)
> >Looking at a couple of lines of information about 
> contributers each time I use ReiserFS progs is just not a 
> problem for me - but it also seems plain to me that 
> restricting changes to the source means that they cannot be 
> put in debian. The license restriction is not compatible with the GPL.
> >Since the actual Reiser4 filesystem is fully free and GPL 
> licensed, can debian include it without the Reiser programs? 
> If some one wants to write GPL compatible reiserfs progs 
> later then all is available "free" - so this does not seem to 
> put the debian social contract in a complete bind. For now, 
> obviously, a user is going to have to use the 
> non-gpl-compatible (and hence non-debian) utilities to create 
> a filesystem, and contributers to it will be credited.
> >  
> >
> Do you really think that there exists some moron willing to spend 4-5 
> man-years just so that debian can freely eliminate mention of 
> who built 
> reiser4?

No I don't, and I agree it would be wasteful to do, (and of no useful value, to me). But it is possible, so I was hoping debian would see the possibility as freedom enough to include the reiser4 filesystem. I want them to include reiser 4, but it seems impossible to include the reiser progs given your licensing requirements.


> 
> > 
> >  
> >
> >>Pr
> >>
> >  
> >
> 
> 

Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Branden Robinson]

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On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 09:20:56AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> >>It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to
> >>questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but
> >>they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame them.
> >>   
> >>
> I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot 
> grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this 
> was wrong.

Does someone have a cite for this?  This is the first I've heard of such
a thing being done to the XFree86 software distribution.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |     Good judgement comes from
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     experience; experience comes from
branden@debian.org                 |     bad judgement.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |     -- Fred Brooks

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
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Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?

[Branden Robinson]

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On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 10:56:13AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-05-03 15:24:00 +0100 Claus Färber <claus@xn--frber-gra.muc.de> wrote:
> 
> > Rememer that an "ad-clause" usually does not render a work non-free,
> > just incompatible with the GPL. [...]
> 
> An "ad-clause" usually applies to documentation or advertising
> supplied with the software, not the software package itself, and only
> requires attribution not a large advert. It sails very close to the
> wind, but doesn't quite fall over.

Any required-advertising clause that makes any imposition on wholly
independent and original works is non-free.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |     I suspect Linus wrote that in a
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     complicated way only to be able to
branden@debian.org                 |     have that comment in there.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |     -- Lars Wirzenius

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