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/  Forum Index
   /  Amiga OS4 Software
      /  X5000 and A1222 SATA driver source code
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PosterThread
cdimauro 
Re: X5000 and A1222 SATA driver source code
Posted on 1-Sep-2018 21:32:43
#61 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Rose

Quote:

Rose wrote:
@ssolie

Quote:
I've been informed that somebody has been trying to smear Hyperion by saying they are in violation of the GPL due to my SATA drivers.


Pro tip. When you blame someone for smearing, don't confirm said violation in same post.

This. In fact:
Quote:
ssolie wrote:
I've been informed that somebody has been trying to smear Hyperion by saying they are in violation of the GPL due to my SATA drivers.

Here are the facts (there are no alternative facts):
1. The SATA drivers are not finished. In fact, they are broken. They cannot handle removable media properly and never will in their current form.
2. I took so long to finish the drivers that I was unable to fix #1 before they were released to the general public via the X5000 product.
3. The guts of the SATA drivers are from libata which is GPL and linked statically so of course the drivers are GPL as well.

So, if the SATA drivers binaries were already released, then there's a clear violation of the GPL, and source should be made already available. No matter if they still aren't finished: it doesn't make sense at all from the license point-of-view. ALL different binaries versions SHOULD have their respective sources released.

It's pretty simple, and that's why it's NOT recommended to use viral licenses like GPL.

Specifically and looking at the GPL conditions, there's a serious possibility that even the OS4 sources should be released, because they became "infected" by the libata GPL sources.

The only way to circumvent this viral effect is to completely isolate the GPL code, and make use of mechanisms like IPC/RPC to exchange data/requests between GPL and non-GPL code.
This is what nVidia does with its closed source drivers. And that's what Intel did with some GPU code (at least when I was working there, and involved in a GPU-related project).

That's not a big thing: it's enough to know how GPL works. Which is not rocket science, albeit looking at many messages here it seems that the forum is full of "experts" in this area... but which have not even the basic understanding of the matter and still pretend to say their opinion.

Anyway, solving the problem is very simple: IF the SATA drivers were already published, then it's enough that an X5000 owner (tslom? ) takes them, and sends a nice e-mail (attaching a copy of the drivers, of course) to the Free Software Foundation underlining that there's a clear violation of the GPL (it's good to put a link to the article which talks about writing such drivers. It's not needed because the drivers can be reverse engineered, but it helps a lot to speed up the checks).
You can be sure that FSF's watchdogs... ehm... lawyers will clarify the situation, and will send a nice letter to Hyperion asking to release the sources of everything that was "touched" by the GPL code.

Many times I've eared people asking to open source OS4 code: now there's a very good chance to do it with a very little effort.

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hth313 
Re: X5000 and A1222 SATA driver source code
Posted on 2-Sep-2018 5:00:03
#62 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-May-2018
Posts: 159
From: Delta, Canada

@cdimauro

I am not so sure about that, actually. FSF is not the copyright owner here if I understand it right. In that case they will simply advice you to contact the copyright owner.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

Also, linking with GPL does not automatically mean the rest of the code is GPL. There can be either licenses and ownership in play. What it probably means is that there are licenses that are incompatible, GPL does not automatically trump everything else.

But I am probably wrong, being one of those "experts"...

So, now I have wasted another couple of minutes of my life due to GPL by answering this.

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cdimauro 
Re: X5000 and A1222 SATA driver source code
Posted on 2-Sep-2018 5:40:08
#63 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@hth313

Quote:

hth313 wrote:
@cdimauro

I am not so sure about that, actually. FSF is not the copyright owner here if I understand it right. In that case they will simply advice you to contact the copyright owner.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

Yes. Usually this kind of GPL code is owned/copyrighted by FSF, because original creators which adhere to the "free software" philosophy give it the copyright. This way the FSF takes also the burden to make legal actions, which can be quite expensive for the average coder.

Specifically, I took a look at the SATA driver source code, and it's copyrighted by Freescale:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/ata/sata_fsl.c

So, the e-mail should be written to it, and not to the FSF.
Quote:
Also, linking with GPL does not automatically mean the rest of the code is GPL. There can be either licenses and ownership in play. What it probably means is that there are licenses that are incompatible, GPL does not automatically trump everything else.

Licenses compatibility is a different topic.

It's correct that GPL virality doesn't automatically apply in all cases, because someone can take the sources of a project which are copyrighted by another person/organization, add some GPL code, and release a new application without releasing the sources, so basically having infringed both the GPL license and the copyright of the original owner. In this case the original owner is not forced to release its sources with the GPL, of course, because it was a victim of an illegal operation made by someone else.

However this case is different and comes back to a common GPL violation. We have a Hyperion employee/contractor (the coders leader?) which explicitly admitted what it was made with the above code.
Quote:
But I am probably wrong, being one of those "experts"...

So, now I have wasted another couple of minutes of my life due to GPL by answering this.

It was useful to clarify the situation, thanks.

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