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McAfee Issues Warning Over 'Ambiguous' Open Source Licenses
[This article puts it nicely, but one could interpret it differently: McAfee have discovered they are violating the GPL and are now trying to find a way to wiggle out of it. Another big company could red-handed pirating Free Software. I hope the media produces the outcry McAfee deserves.] |
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Comments (14)
> How fscking hard is that?
If you had ever used a McAfee product you wouldn't have to ask that question. For them: Very hard indeed.
If you had ever used a McAfee product you wouldn't have to ask that question. For them: Very hard indeed.
I stopped using McAfee products when the "security suite" wouldn't allow my sisters computer to connect to the internet and every time I tried to change the setting to allow it to it would hard lock the computer.
But it seems like the incompetence of someone there is more than useful, they decided to use a different product to enhance theirs in some way without reading the license first to see if they could, and if they could what they had to do first. Then when they find out that the GPL has a redistribution clause in it they warn people to not use open source software, because their may be some sort of restriction in it?
I wonder how they have stayed in business so long producing broken products and not checking to see if they are incorporating other software into their products in a legal manner.
But it seems like the incompetence of someone there is more than useful, they decided to use a different product to enhance theirs in some way without reading the license first to see if they could, and if they could what they had to do first. Then when they find out that the GPL has a redistribution clause in it they warn people to not use open source software, because their may be some sort of restriction in it?
I wonder how they have stayed in business so long producing broken products and not checking to see if they are incorporating other software into their products in a legal manner.
". . .-- the most widely used open source license -- have yet to be tested in court."
Is it 1998 or 2008? Shucks, seems like someone would have actually read the silly article before releasing it. Perhaps it is an early April 1st joke. :) Still can't imagine anyone using this kind of sortaware anyway. . .
regards
Is it 1998 or 2008? Shucks, seems like someone would have actually read the silly article before releasing it. Perhaps it is an early April 1st joke. :) Still can't imagine anyone using this kind of sortaware anyway. . .
regards
The whole "AV" industry seems to have a slight scent of corruption about it. McAfee rose to prominence by promoting the Total Pee Cee Apocalypse that the "Michelangelo Virus" didn't end up causing in 1992: http://www.vmyths.com/column/2/2002/2/23/
And I guess it really doesn't matter if the industry is corrupt or not: the clubby, insider, holier-than-thou attitudes all "AV" people seen to exhibit just invites suspicion and contempt, on a personal and corporate level.
And I guess it really doesn't matter if the industry is corrupt or not: the clubby, insider, holier-than-thou attitudes all "AV" people seen to exhibit just invites suspicion and contempt, on a personal and corporate level.
> The whole "AV" industry seems to have a slight scent of corruption about it.
You mean like none of them detecting and removing the Sony rootkit?
You mean like none of them detecting and removing the Sony rootkit?
jdixon, don't forget the deals they make with other corporate customers to not flag their spywares and rootkits. Sony wasn't the only one. I ranted about this, for all the good it did: http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsecur/article.p...
And you'll recall how Microsoft quietly bought out Mark Russinovich not longer after the Sony rootkit fiasco. And they call us hysterical wild-eyed hippies and zealots for calling these behaviors evil. sigh.
Quoting: This whole sorry incident brought to light a question that many of us in IT have been asking for a long time–who watches the watchers? It is not paranoia to suspect big companies of making deals with each other that harm us little customers–it happens all the time.
And you'll recall how Microsoft quietly bought out Mark Russinovich not longer after the Sony rootkit fiasco. And they call us hysterical wild-eyed hippies and zealots for calling these behaviors evil. sigh.
I had never connected the "Sysinternals" buyout with Mark Russinovich and the Sony Rootkit, even though I know Sysinternals consisted of Mark Russinovich. Since he had cast his lot with the MSFT Marching Morons, I had kind of written him off. Remember "NTCRASHME"? Russinovich found that NT4.0 system calls had very little argument validation, and he did this by giving system calls randomly-generated arguments. He found 12 (as I recall) new system calls in NT4.0 that had apparently had cut-n-pasted argument-non-checking. He pulled the program as soon as MSFT asked him to.
Mark Russinovich is an obvious example of the "Guru" that closed-source software ends up enabling. He's spent the last 10+ years grinding on Windows NT, with or without MSFT's permission, I don't know. He's got some Secret Knowledge that the rest of the downtrodden Windows Codemonkeys don't have, so he's venerated. And eventually, Sanctified by a huge sum of money from MFST, to keep his knowledge to himself.
Mark Russinovich is an obvious example of the "Guru" that closed-source software ends up enabling. He's spent the last 10+ years grinding on Windows NT, with or without MSFT's permission, I don't know. He's got some Secret Knowledge that the rest of the downtrodden Windows Codemonkeys don't have, so he's venerated. And eventually, Sanctified by a huge sum of money from MFST, to keep his knowledge to himself.
Quoting:He's spent the last 10+ years grinding on Windows NT, with or without MSFT's permission, I don't know. He's got some Secret Knowledge that the rest of the downtrodden Windows Codemonkeys don't have, so he's venerated.And eventually, Sanctified by a huge sum of money from MFST, to keep his knowledge to himself.
MS had to do what they did. The reason Mark Russinovich knew so much about Windows NT is because he knew the source of NT pretty well already and worked with some of the main developers of VMS.
I would be surprised if he didn't have access to VMS source code at Carnegie Mellon University where he got his Ph.D.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/4494/4494.html
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/authors/auth4354.aspx
I have never believed the "WNT == VMS" story. Sure, NTFS and ODS-2/Files-11 are pretty similar, but NT's process model is vastly different than VMS. NT's process model is clearly way more like Unix than like VMS. That is, executable files get loaded and executed in their own virtual memory spaces, just like Unix, but unlike VMS, where "images" get loaded in the process' memory, and "chased down" when they finish, returning control to DCL at a well known address in the process.
The original "Inside Windows NT", by Helen Custer, read like a description of Mach 2.5, not a description of VMS, albeit without any of the explicit details of tasks, threads, VM regions and messages. Of course, it was also never clear that "Inside Windows NT" actually had any connection with the reality o f Windows NT 3.1 or 3.5 Perhaps it really was about Mach 2.5, and Cutler, Mhyrvold, etc were just blowing smoke up Custer's skirt.
Also, you've got to consider those persistant rumors about NT's murky origins as "Micah", the operating system that was to have succeeded VMS at DEC, when the PRISM processor acheived reality. I heard almost exactly the same story from two different people years apart: Cutler brought Micah source with him to Microsoft, then based NT largely on that source (which doesn't gibe with the long development time, but oh, well). When DEC licensed NT for the Alpha/AXP (almost exactly prism) 64-bit CPUs, they got NT source code that actually contained DEC copyright notices. Palmer (CEO of DEC) cut a sweetheart deal with Microsoft about Windows NT on Alpha, which explains why Alpha was the last non-x86 CPU supported by NT, using the Digital copyright notices in the NT code as a Big Stick to Enforce Compliance. Bet he wishes he'd actually filed suit, now, but that's water under the bridge.
The original "Inside Windows NT", by Helen Custer, read like a description of Mach 2.5, not a description of VMS, albeit without any of the explicit details of tasks, threads, VM regions and messages. Of course, it was also never clear that "Inside Windows NT" actually had any connection with the reality o f Windows NT 3.1 or 3.5 Perhaps it really was about Mach 2.5, and Cutler, Mhyrvold, etc were just blowing smoke up Custer's skirt.
Also, you've got to consider those persistant rumors about NT's murky origins as "Micah", the operating system that was to have succeeded VMS at DEC, when the PRISM processor acheived reality. I heard almost exactly the same story from two different people years apart: Cutler brought Micah source with him to Microsoft, then based NT largely on that source (which doesn't gibe with the long development time, but oh, well). When DEC licensed NT for the Alpha/AXP (almost exactly prism) 64-bit CPUs, they got NT source code that actually contained DEC copyright notices. Palmer (CEO of DEC) cut a sweetheart deal with Microsoft about Windows NT on Alpha, which explains why Alpha was the last non-x86 CPU supported by NT, using the Digital copyright notices in the NT code as a Big Stick to Enforce Compliance. Bet he wishes he'd actually filed suit, now, but that's water under the bridge.
Quoting:Bet he wishes he'd actually filed suit,...
As I recall, there was a suit but was quickly settled out of court (~300 millions). And the solid evidence was those copyright notes and code comments which were exact copies of the ones found in VMS. The deal included an agreement that Microsoft will commit to supporting the Alpha platform for a number of years. I still have an Alpha DS10 server (brand new model at the time) that shows Windows 5.0 Beta in its firmware. That is when Microsoft dropped the Alpha support abruptly and the product never saw the light. Windows 2000 (64bit) was developed on the Alpha platform since there was no Intel 64bits processor at the time.
Also, as I recall, Mark Russinovich mentioned this settlement in one of his articles about the similarities between VMS & NT.
You are right, it is water under the bridge, but it is history to learn from.
Abe,
How much for the Alpha? ;-)
How much for the Alpha? ;-)
Quoting:How much for the Alpha? ;-)
Priceless! :)
I figured, but it didn't hurt to ask.
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You now care about it since you have to give modified source code back to the original author and the community.
NEWSFLASH ... no one made you take the shortcut to use open source software for your project in the first place ... if you don't want to give away your source code, write your own stuff. How fscking hard is that?