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Fink Maintainer Steps Down Due To GPL Infringment
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 14, 2001 05:10 PM
from the dirty-rotten-mac-os-x-users dept.
from the dirty-rotten-mac-os-x-users dept.
DShadow noted that
the Fink maintainer Christoph Pfisterer has resigned
largely because of GPL violations by openosx and macgimp, as well as macosx.forked.net.
There's definitely some tension between the mac world and the Open Source and GPL worlds. Certain amounts of culture clash are inevitable, but hopefully great projects like this will continue, and commercial vendors will be able to play nice without alienating developers. The good news for Macheads is that fink will continue just fine.
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Fink Maintainer Steps Down Due To GPL Infringment
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gpl community (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:gpl community (Score:4, Insightful)
taanstafl.
The GPL doesn't have an advertising clause (Score:5, Informative)
It would be perfectly legal for me to grab a copy of the Linux source code, rip out all the credits as to who did what work, and release my new OS "Brianux". This would be reprehensible (and for the record, I have no intention of actually doing this, so save your flames)- but perfectly legal so long as I released the source.
Re:The GPL doesn't have an advertising clause (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The GPL doesn't have an advertising clause (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, at first Mandrake was nothing more than RedHat with KDE. They happily took RedHat's GPLed installer (and other features) and put Mandrake in where RedHat had been.
That's Free Software.
Now, it sounds to me like the people that these groups that were actually selling copies of this software should have been a little more careful about giving credit where credit was due if for no other reason than ticking off the primary developer is a bad deal.
Now, the fact that forked.net wasn't providing source code along with their binaries, is a different story all together. The GPL does not guarantee that the original author will get credit, instead it guarantees that the end user gets source code. If you want credit then use a different license. Just remember that advertising clauses and the GPL don't mix, so you won't be able to use any GPLed source in your new product.
Should Apple be involved? (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, being a long-time Mac user myself, I'm totally clueless to how these kinds of open source issues are worked out, but I am curious about it. These kinds of issues can't be new. Can any of you more acquainted with this topic offer any sort of precedent for these kinds of issues/disputes?
--Rick
Woooooah Nelly.... (Score:4, Informative)
1) There's nothing wrong with charging for access to files. You pay your ISP, right?
2) Apex *is*, apparently, working to comply with the GPL. From what I've read in the past on his site, he works in the commercial fishing industry up in Alaska. I would imagine that his time to work on the site and the packages is limited.
3) Apex has been very helpful in the past on the forums hosted on his server. Lots of people have requested ports of software (some of which are difficult) and he has come through for them.
Chris
Attitude? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pbur
he needs to de-stress (Score:5, Insightful)
The email exchange between him and the supposed gpl violators is a hoot. The very first response Christoph got from the company was "did we screw up? tell us how to give proper credit," and Christoph then proceeds to continue bashing and raving.
It really sounds like christoph needs a major vacation, the stress seems to be breaking him. I don't know any of the people/orgs involved, but just read his rant and the links he posted at the bottom.
Re:Jeshua Lacock is a rat fink. (Score:4, Interesting)
GPL: Law or Social Understanding? (Score:5, Insightful)
The weakness is that the GPL would probably lose in court, to some degree. This is because copyright law and, in many ways, the legal system, in the US and elsewhere, were never designed to work in accordance with the common good, especially when it comes to issues of property, and even moreso when it comes to the issues of intellectual property (really just an illusion of modern society).
Therefore, when approaching breaches of the GPL, it's probably in our best interest, as a community, to not immediately threaten legal repurcussions, but instead work on other ways to pressure entities to abide by our community's standards.
Any entity that uses GPL'ed code in bad faith ultimately will recieve a pretty bad reputation in the growing free software community. Also, if they're not willing to abide by our rules, what says that we should abide by theirs? For instance, if Microsoft rolls a bunch of GPL'd code into a new product, then we retain an ethical (if not legal) right to distribute the resulting binary of that product as much as we'd like.
I didn't intend this post to be as long as it is, but basically, think about this: Do we see free software as a phenomenon? Something that just happened? Or as a movement? Something that we all made happen? If it's a phenomenon, then the best we can hope for is that the GPL sticks, on a legal basis. If it's a movement, then we're going to have to be prepared to come together and face challenges. So far, although a lot of us haven't acknowledged it, we've functioned as a movement, and we've been very successful. Witness the FUD that Microsoft used to spread about Linux. Our responses to that FUD ended up making MS look more like sore losers than better producers.
Also consider that it's possible the struggle for collectively owned information and intellectual property may some day move far outside of the internet, and into the real world. That might require a whole new re-evaluation of our tactics and ideals.
Okay, enough ranting.
Short Fuse (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a shareware author... (Score:5, Insightful)
It results in a fair amount of whinery, but it sounds like this guy is going to be shocked when he finds that users in the professional world will be just as nasty, plus they'll threaten to withhold payment.
The e-mail exchange didn't impress me a lot either--it sounded like he had one or two points that the guy was willing to concede on, but he blew up and brought other things into the mix for a flame-o-rama.
So I'm sorry that he's no longer a Mac developer, and I'd encourage him to put his studies first. On the other hand, I'm not going to get too worried about the nature of the Mac community over it.
His resignation say otherwise. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds more like just plain tired than GPL violations, but then I'm not a slashdot media spinner.
Christoph deserves a great big THANKS from the world of computer users. I have worked on similar ports to other processors and it is mind numbing tedious work that stretches to the horizon and beyond. Every day you know that you will spend it fixing bugs in a dozen programs, bugs that will range from the trivial to the near impossible to find.
You do not plan and execute your plan as in the development of a program. You work your way down the list of unwashed packages, build them, test them, fix them and check them off only to find more packages added to the list than you checked off that day. Most of the packages you won't give a rat's ass about, but you do them because someone, somewhere will be wanting it.
Take a break Christoph. Get caught up in school, then when that itch returns create another wonderful thing.
I dunno... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's certainly some clashing between the Mac and Unix worlds (the iTunes installer issue was probably caused by that kind of mutual ignorance) but Apple and proprietary developers have generally gotten along well with the BSD and gcc people as far as license issues go.
The problems described here don't strike me as being a Mac vs free software conflict. They sound a lot more like the stuff Linux developers have been dealing with for the last few years -- LinuxOne-style abuse of redistribution and self-absorbed users who think that because you gave them something you work for them.
Re:I dunno... (Score:4, Informative)
What?
Recently, maybe, but take a look at this link [www.desy.de] to a copy of the 1993 g++ FAQ:
The FSF didn't end the boycott of Apple until 1995, and even then, they pretty much said [helsinki.fi] that unless supporting MacOS was ridiculously easy, they wouldn't bother accepting patches because that might impact their effort to produce the "GNU operating system".
If you want a quick summary of the boycott, the reasons, and how the FSF eventually "forgave" Apple the same way he "forgave" KDE [linuxtoday.com], you can check out this link [isu.edu]. Frankly, I'm surprised that the FSF and Apple are managing to get along as well as they are; it speaks volumes about Apple's commitment, and about the way the FSF has matured over the years, as well.
More on MacSlash (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I'm sad to see him go, but hope he'll be back eventually. I understand his frustration with the "community" but hope he notices all of us who forgot to say how much we appreciated his work before he left.
I think I'm gonna' make a bumper sticker: "Have you hugged an Open Source Programmer today?"
Overworked and burned out... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/bezr
(section: "Cult of Personality, burnout of the leader")
As a maintainer of my own growing project on sourceforge I often emphathize with the items listed in this paper. Some people have a tendency to put an enormous amount of pressure on themselves. When this happens you naturally become very defensive and intolerant. This is probably lessened when you have a strong core group.
Time to take a vacation.
I shouldn't have been so slack ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I really meant to post a "thank you" note at some point. I wish I had. I can't possibly account for how much time the Fink people have saved me.
OK - from reading the background material, I think that Christoph has made some dubious assumptions about people at times, and attacked people a little too eagerly - but these are really just symptoms of someone working way too hard for too little reward. I get like that at work sometimes.
How about we all take a little bit of time today to send out a simple "thanks" email to one person involved with one piece of free software that you use regularly. It'll only take a minute or so, and may just keep that person feeling good enough about doing what they're doing that they'll keep on doing it.
Just go and do it now. Slashdot will still be here when you get back.
Title is false; make up your own minds (Score:5, Informative)
1) OpenOSX appears to be distributing source code on their CDs, and now gives credit to fink on the MacGIMP CD web page.
2) Macosx.forked.net has also posted credit to fink on the home page web site, as well as indicating their intention to address GPL issues.
Apparently Pfisterer is irritated in part because they were slow to give fink credit; but as others have pointed out, that's not a GPL violation.
Following the other links he includes in his "resignation letter" suggests that he's quick to get irritated -- especially when people point this out to him (cf. the "abiword" thread). Perhaps there are other things going on in his life, and this isn't a good time for him to lead an open-source project. Fine. Kudos to him for leaving his ball behind instead of taking it with him.
But the article title ("Fink Maintainer Steps Down Due To GPL Infringment") is misleading at best. Even Pfisterer didn't make this claim.
Bogus Claims (Score:3, Insightful)
He misses the point that that is FINE. In fact, mandrake did that for a while, with a few changes.
The GPL means you can copy, rename etc as long as you contribute the source back, and make sure copyright in the source is accurate.
He needs to get a grip.
For the best. (Score:3, Flamebait)
In his email, he mentions releasing, say, Red Hat Linux with a few changes and no mention of RH, which would be okay. Not nice, but okay.
Can anyone point out the GPL violation, or is this another Slashdot fuckup?
Perfect example of why NOT to use the GPL. (Score:4, Informative)
I then decided to follow my ideals, and some years ago I pursued some email with Richard Stallman (RMS for short) on three issues:
1) The Free Software Foundation should support the efforts against crypto export restrictions in the US. It was suspected some linux distributions were exporting this code but there was no official statement on this.
He (RMS) agreed that such restrictions were against the spirit of free software redistribution. He included a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the Free Software Foundation's site.
2)During our email, he insisted I should use the term GNU/Linux, something that sounded perfectly logical although somewhat uncomfortable. I then asked if I could use the term GNU/FreeBSD and GNU/AIX (I used AIX with a complete GNU development system since those parts were unbundled by IBM) since I was using GNU components that were much bigger and equally important (at least to me) as the kernel.
RMS responded on both cases with a clear " no".
3) I commented that, given the FSF's objectives, FreeBSD was doing a better job than Linux.
He (and no doubt many readers) was surprised by this affirmation and asked for an explanation. I reasoned that since the objective behind the FSF was providing free software, and Linux was being heavily commercialized while FreeBSD was not, FreeBSD was nearer to the objectives. In those days, the newly born Caldera's distribution had a lot of commercial goodies and their base distribution couldn't be downloaded anywhere, I also commented that no one could stop the companies like Caldera from gradually replacing free parts of GNU/Linux with commercial elements until they would effectively replace the complete OS (I also mentioned the linux emulation in BSD in another context). To this final point, RMS responded that the only thing we could do was write more free software.
Nowadays I personally think that Richard Stallman is a good person but he is confused (I hope he thinks the same of me when he finishes reading this article
the GNU Public License will not save the world,
there shouldn't be a universal license; different situations require different licenses.
This happens all the time (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way to police this -- and stop it -- is to go public with the problem. But that has it's own problem -- most no one will care about the problem.
Notice that Fink went public with these infringements 3 weeks ago.
It takes making the "public" is glaring away -- via a front page posting at
This will work for big projects like Fink. That means that little projects will get their work stolen from without any real means to fight back.
I know all too well.
I worked up what I consider a really clever kludge for blocking banner ads via the Proxy Auto Config mechanism built into Netscape (since 2.0) and IE (since 4.0). http://www.schooner.com/~loverso/no-ads/ [schooner.com] I made this kludge right around Netscape 2.02, Spring 1996. (That was my JavaScript hacking days)
The PAC file I make available has been mentioned by me
I do this for the fun of it, after all.
Last year I read in the 5/28 "Gearhead" column in Network World Fusion where he talks about this a spyware blocking software. He mentions that it can also generate proxy auto config files to block web sites with ads.
Hmmmm, I think.
I download the software. Yup, there's my stuff inside his package. I go to the author's webpage. His documentation on Proxy Auto Config files turns out to be identical to the my documentation in my PAC file.
My copyright notice is gone. There is no mention that the PAC file was (originally) written by me. There is no indication the package in question contains works by anyone other than the author of the package.
I mentioned this in email to the author of the package. I mentioned this in his forum. I mentioned this to the author of the "Gearhead" column.
This person is still using my ideas, my code, and my documentation in his tool, and still isn't giving credit (or my copyright notice).
His attitude is: "I got it off some web site, so I can do whatever I want with it.".
Here's my post to his message board: http://www.morelerbe.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/ultimate
(psst: don't use his software: he's a plagerist!)
Never claimed as a GPL violation (Score:5, Interesting)
This article steps over the line and into libal. OpenOSX is not violating the GPL, it never was, and it wasnt even acused of doing so. What did happen is that Pfisterer thought that every redistributor who used Gimp and Frink should point out that he's responsable. Which may seam reasionable, but the problem is you have lots of contributors behind gimp, do they all get credits on the web page and promotional material? Or do you do what *every* other distribution does, and put the READMEs and CONTRIBUTORs files in the documentation and source.
Acusing OpenOSX of violating the GPL on a high trafic site like this is going to damage them a lot. How about an apology for publishing something that was flat wrong? its what I'd expect from a real news source.
What have OpenOSX done wrong? Sell open source software CDs at a high mark up, RedHat does that.
As a long time reader of Slashdot, I'm getting fed up of the Tabloid instincts being shown, and I'd like the Editorial Staff to Grow Up and show some Responsability.
Open Note to Christoph Pfisterer (Score:5, Insightful)
It took me about 3 years to develop an attitude that didn't make me want to kick my cat or yell at people for cutting me off in a gas station after work.
If you can't take the stress of dealing with idiots and morons, you should not be a project leader/maintainer. Especially for Mac users! (Not a dig or a flame!) But they aren't known for their technical self-help-can-do attitudes. These folks are used to the = MacOS 9 and not a Unix based system like MacOSX. They are used to simple easy to use software and operating systems.
What I learned was the ability to not give a shit if I pleased these people. Don't get me wrong, I truly care to help people and do so every single day. But I always see the same idiots over and over calling me to walk them through the same exact procedure over the phone. Most of these guys/gals are a communications nightmare who can barely use a mouse and they don't know how to listen nor follow directions. We are talking about 3 hour phone calls to accomplish something that should only take 10min.
That said, I can relate to what you are going through. I've written over 300MB worth of web pages detailing all sorts of technical data and my own technical teammates still line up at my desk with questions that are answered in the documentation. Heck if the techs don't read it what makes you think the end users will?
However, it is a crime to just loose it with a customer. Even if that customer is not paying for your services (mine sure as hell aren't...). It was even worse that you publically did it in an open forum. Heck in a professional environment, if I am going to tear someone a new asshole, I take them into a private location where no one else can hear us and I let'em have it.
What you need to learn to do is to roll with the punches, dodge and weave to avoid the bullets, and still maintain an easy going attitude. I do not carry these frustrations around with me. I have learned to exercise extreme patience. If you cannot learn to do this, stay far far away from customer service positions.
I do the bare minimum for the idiots and morons but go the extra mile for the ones who are at least polite and pleasant. If an idiot happens to be at least pleasant and nice then they might get extra help.
Things you could have done:
1. Made an email template with RTFM and links to the FAQ, etc. in it. The latest versions that have been tested, etc. Just forward these automated responses to the idiots.
2. You could just ignore the morons, heck you are not making money on this. You don't need to email all of them. I am sure people like Linus ignore emails all the time.
3. Setup a survey to find out just how many users are actually happy with the Fink project. I bet they outnumber the ones who were pissing you off!