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      /  Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
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PosterThread
TRIPOS 
Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 10-Sep-2015 20:22:35
#1 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Apr-2014
Posts: 1204
From: Unknown

On September 5, 2015, the MorphOS developer Harry Sintonen (Piru) went public about the fact that Hyperion used pirated material in AmigaOS4's Software Development Kit.

Quote:
Background

On August 30, 2015 Hyperion Entertainment CVBA released a new version of the AmigaOS Software Development Kit (SDK). One of the newly included components is called btree.library. I created the original btree.library to be part of MorphOS in early 2000s. Development material for this library was released as a part of the MorphOS Software Development Kit.

Infringement

At least two files included in the AmigaOS Software Development Kit contain my intellectual property without my consent. The files contain only trivial changes such as removal of the copyright notice:

include/include_h/libraries/btree.h
documentation/autodocs/btree.doc
This infringement is particularily damning considering that over the years Hyperion Entertainment CVBA on numerous occasions claimed MorphOS to be infringing copyright and threatened to take legal action.

I applaud the decision to add more MorphOS API compatibility to Hyperion's operating system. It should be done without copyright infringement, however.

I reported this incident to Hyperion September 4, 2015 22:50 (UTC).


The news about this issue was reposted on Amiga.org and AmigaWorld.net (by former Hyperion co-funder Evert Carton, who posted it in an old thread from the last time the same developer did the same thing, with the words "It's a pattern").

The reactions to this was a bit surprising, and frankly quite disheartening.

Some people responded with mockery, some people responded along the line "yawn, big deal", some people tried to defend Hyperion saying that removing the copyright notice and piracy was merely some kind of mistake, the "Open Source Mafia" made their point that piracy and copyright violations are only a problem because stuff are copyrighted in the first place and there are bigger issues to care about, like Syrian refugees coming to Germany. The owner of the Amiga.org and AmigaWorld.net sites, Trevordick, a stakeholder in the OS4 eco system, tried to reduce it to some "camp war" issue and urged his flock not to "revert to petty bickering". Like Piru is the one to blame for making a fuss, "let's all help in shutting him up". His moderator "eliyahu", notorious for his shoot-from-the-hip moderation of posts going against his views and deletion of people he simply doesn't like, went on a campaign to simply silence the issue to make it quickly go away. He pointed out that Hyperion would make an update.

Regarding the update:

Quote:
On September 6, 2015 Hyperion Entertainment CVBA released a new version of the AmigaOS Software Development Kit (SDK). The release notes of this new SDK version are the following:

SDK 53.30 (5.9.2015)
* Updated btree.library API

The actual changes are superficial rephrasing of the comments and documentation. Whilst slightly different now, the files are still clearly built upon my originals. No one has contacted me offering any kind of explanation or apology.

Regardless, the fact that the files have been changed in this way clearly is an admission of guilt.


IMHO the belittling, the mockery, the "quit wining" urges, etc from the community (and from officials(!)) are almost as serious as the copyright offense in the first place. Shameful. And truly an eye-opener of the dual-standards some people try to enforce when it comes to anything Hyperion and/or OS4 related.

I think that the MorphOS developer CISC said it well today:

Quote:
I think it's unbelievably shameful that this is being quietly ignored to death, especially on sites like amiga.org and amigaworld.net where you can even see posts from smegheads trying to justify these appalling actions by Hyperion and the serial-infringer himself; Thore Böckelmann.

Hyperion haven't even apologized for the incident, much less rectified it, the minor changes they did just incriminate them further. If they truly wanted to fix the situation they should either have removed the offending items completely, or truly have rewritten them. As it stands now the SDK still contains copyright-infringing items (contrary to the beliefs of certain posters who didn't even bother to check).

If there's any decency left in this community there should be put together a bounty so Piru can raise legal action against these amateur crooks.


I'm thinking about putting together and release my own OS4 distribution (OS5?) based on the OS4 FE ISO, but including a copy of "zTools", "Bubble Shooter DX", "Workbench CANDI", and "PersonalPaint" (and other "AmiStore" apps (are there any more?)). Of course it would be OK since I will use a Hex editor and a Text editor to remove all the copyright notices from everywhere. Right?

I wonder what the public reactions would be when Hyperion and Trevordick opposes this? "Yawn", "please stop this pointless hate and camp war already", "I urge people not to revert to petty bickering", "Well, it should have been open source in the first place, suit yourself if you don't want to share"?

"But... but... it's not the same thing, that's big, the other was minor (at least I think so)"!

It is exactly the same copyright laws. They apply to everyone. You can't be "just a little" pregnant, either you're knocked up or you aren't. It's really a black OR white thing, no gray scale whatsoever. The magnitude of the offense merely affects how much money you could get out of the law suit for copyright infringement/piracy, but the legal (and moral) offense in itself is digital matter; either it is, or it isn't. TRUE or FALSE.

Shame! Shame! Shame!

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Cheese 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 10-Sep-2015 22:13:26
#2 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 23-Oct-2006
Posts: 314
From: Unknown

@TRIPOS

+1 and remember MUI 4? All the same, shame...

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Xenic 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 10-Sep-2015 22:33:40
#3 ]
Super Member
Joined: 2-Feb-2004
Posts: 1246
From: Pennsylvania, USA

@TRIPOS
Just slapping a copyright notice on something doesn't mean you have an original copyright. An Internet search for "btree" and the function names in the btree autodoc shows that the btree methods and algorithms were invented back in 1971 and that there are numerous copyrights on btree implementations; some of which have the same function names as the MOS & OS4 versions. I doubt if anyone wrote an MOS or OS4 btree implementation that doesn't infringe on previous patents or copyrights in some way.


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samo79 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 0:14:48
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 13-Feb-2003
Posts: 3505
From: Italy, Perugia

Bah all that story for a few lines of code into an header file, mate got a life ..

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amigawiki 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 5:51:24
#5 ]
New Member
Joined: 28-Aug-2015
Posts: 5
From: Unknown

Last edited by amigawiki on 17-Sep-2015 at 08:08 PM.

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kamelito 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 6:15:05
#6 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 26-Jul-2004
Posts: 813
From: Unknown

@Xenic

+1
Morality if you copy, make it very hard for others to prove it...
Kamelito

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 6:21:11
#7 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@TRIPOS

United States Patent 5283894, granted in 1994, appears to show a way to use a 'Meta Access Method' [12] to allow concurrent B+ tree access and modification without locks. The technique accesses the tree 'upwards' for both searches and updates by means of additional in-memory indexes that point at the blocks in each level in the block cache. No reorganization for deletes is needed and there are no 'next' pointers in each block as in Lehman and Yao.

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amigawiki 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 6:29:53
#8 ]
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Joined: 28-Aug-2015
Posts: 5
From: Unknown


Last edited by amigawiki on 17-Sep-2015 at 08:07 PM.

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BSzili 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 7:01:32
#9 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 16-Nov-2013
Posts: 447
From: Unknown

@Xenic

So even though Piru wrote the headers and the autodocs, it's not his work and he can't copyright it? :O

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TRIPOS 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 7:51:38
#10 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Apr-2014
Posts: 1204
From: Unknown

@NutsAboutAmiga

Please stay on topic!

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TRIPOS 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 7:54:32
#11 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Apr-2014
Posts: 1204
From: Unknown

@Xenic

Nobody said anything about clean-room re-implementations, that's not the issue here. The issue is copyright violation/piracy. Also, please read up a bit on how copyright works, there seems to be some gaps in your knowledge. There are many explanations of it to be found online.

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TRIPOS 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 7:55:46
#12 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Apr-2014
Posts: 1204
From: Unknown

@Cheese

Quote:

Cheese wrote:
@TRIPOS

+1 and remember MUI 4? All the same, shame...


Indeed, and that's why Hyperion's co-funder Evert Carton said: "It's a pattern"!

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NomadOfNorad 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:00:45
#13 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 2-Jun-2003
Posts: 746
From: Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Earth, Sol system, Milky Way galaxy

Thing is, what if the btree.library in OS4.1 is a completely independent version from the MOS one? Say, one made via clean-room reverse-engineering or something?

I'm unfamiliar with the origin of this btree thing. Did btree originate completely on MOS, or is the MOS btree.library based on an older implementation by someone else? Say, someone at Commodore?


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BSzili 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:04:01
#14 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 16-Nov-2013
Posts: 447
From: Unknown

@NomadOfNorad

This has nothing to to with the library. It's about copying the MOS btree.library SDK with the original copyright removed.

Last edited by BSzili on 11-Sep-2015 at 08:08 AM.

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NomadOfNorad 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:18:21
#15 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 2-Jun-2003
Posts: 746
From: Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Earth, Sol system, Milky Way galaxy

@BSzili

Is the SDK basically a list of btree.library system calls? That is, am API listing? Or are there actual executables that generate the hooks that connect up to the btree-library?

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cha05e90 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:25:37
#16 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Apr-2009
Posts: 1275
From: Germany

@TRIPOS
Quote:
The actual changes are superficial rephrasing of the comments and documentation.

Hmm, so this doesn't seem to solve "the problem". What do you/Piru/whoever expect?

Quote:
there should be put together a bounty so Piru can raise legal action against these amateur crooks.

Interesting idea. This will lead to...what? I assume to nothing. Even if someone "wins" this legal action, it won't change anything. Except money will be burned...but I suppose the only reason for this approach is for "being right".

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BSzili 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:30:04
#17 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 16-Nov-2013
Posts: 447
From: Unknown

@NomadOfNorad

It's the C header file, plus all the documentation on how to use it.

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OlafS25 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:31:09
#18 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-May-2010
Posts: 6321
From: Unknown

@TRIPOS

if you attack me personal then I also have to respond...

this kind of affairs should be posted where they belong. There are persons responsible for the contribution and for the SDK and that is where it should be solved, not on sites like this or amiga.org where propably none of the responsible persons even reads. It only serves for a flame fest like in countless other threads before. Your posting with calling me "Opensource mafia" is really lowest level and is not making your choice more sympathic and this kind of tone will not bring new users. The attitudes and behavior in your camp (not only from you) are at least for me reason never use MorphOS, regardless how good it might be. Start to think before posting or I could call your camp "copyright mafia" because of the lack of interest to work together. Perhaps it is really better all go in different directions. My view has changed there very much in recent years.

BTW I just ordered AmigaOS 4.1 FE

Last edited by OlafS25 on 11-Sep-2015 at 08:46 AM.

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NomadOfNorad 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:39:05
#19 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 2-Jun-2003
Posts: 746
From: Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Earth, Sol system, Milky Way galaxy

@BSzili

The C header file is the thing that tells the compiler what hooks-into-the-library code to include into the compiled executable, right? So, if Hyperion wrote their own, compatible set of includes compiler code that uses the same hooks, how would we know the difference than if it was using includes compiler code that came from MOS?

In any even, this is beginning to look like "He said, she said" stuff. oO

Last edited by NomadOfNorad on 11-Sep-2015 at 08:40 AM.
Last edited by NomadOfNorad on 11-Sep-2015 at 08:40 AM.

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utri007 
Re: Copyright Infringement in OS4 SDK
Posted on 11-Sep-2015 8:44:06
#20 ]
Super Member
Joined: 12-Aug-2003
Posts: 1074
From: United States of Europe

@TRIPOS

Very childis way to compare. If someone does something wrong, does it allow you to do something wrong?

you also up scale problem very generously, single text file vs. OS4 and third party programs?

As far I have understand problem is because single volunteered developer/ non paid developer. It doesn't remove Hyperion's respnsibility, but it makes problem more understandable.

Knowing Piru's personal way to do / say things, some people (not just Hyperion or OS4 people) might just want to ignore him.


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