what a lot of double-talk!
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| Author | Content |
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| tuxchick Nov 04, 2005 9:36 AM EDT |
"Mandriva and Cheek have publicly stated that they would make the source code available as soon as Cheek's computers arrive in France. That could take from three to six months. " Why, are they strapped to dolphins? Give me a break! That is simply not credible. It is also not credible that the code only exists on those computers, without any sort of backups or redundancy. "Adam Williamson, of Mandriva, sought to clarify the issue involving Desktop/LX technology. According to Williamson, Mandriva has not actually implemented code from the Desktop/LX project, but rather re-implemented the ideas using fresh code." Mmmkay, whatever. It's a sad day when PR weasels infest the FOSS world, bringing spin and ambiguity. Why can't you just play straight with us? ""According to Williamson, "...he's not at all opposed to releasing whatever source needs to be released, in principle." "What about in fact? This reeks of evasion. It should be a minor issue- either licenses are being honored, because that is what the FOSS world is all about, or they are not, which would be sad, but correctable. All of this fancy dodging and weaving makes me think something nasty is afoot. |
| devnet Nov 04, 2005 9:39 AM EDT |
This reeks of Microsoftian Tactics. Way to go Mandriva! This is your first comparison to Redmond! Yay! |
| Pringles Nov 05, 2005 9:54 AM EDT |
Gotta agree here. If Mandriva is so up front about everything, why don't they issue a public formal statement about this? Way to go LXer for pointing out GPL abuses! |
| AdamW Nov 05, 2005 10:52 AM EDT |
The "in principle" was a quote taken from a much longer email. In context it meant that Joe is happy to release any infringing code in principle, but no-one at Mandriva has yet determined in practice what code is infringing, what code needs to be released, and what code we will in fact end up releasing. (This is obviously impossible until we actually have the code). That's all it meant. I don't get what you mean by dodging and weaving. Nobody's dodging and nobody's weaving. Everyone at Mandriva has said the same thing all the way through: we will release any code that has to be released as soon as we can. We may release more. That's the bottom line. The original article implied that the Mandriva 2006 products included actual code from Lycoris and that they may therefore be infringing open source licenses. I originally wrote to LXer to correct this implication, because it's not true. There is no Lycoris code in any Mandriva 2006 product. They are all in full compliance with all open source licenses; all the code to all the open source software in the Mandriva 2006 releases is available from any of our public FTP mirrors. No ambiguity, just a simple correction. I wanted to make it clear that the only product with potential license issues is Lycoris Desktop / LX. We accept that we are now responsible for this product and will release any necessary code. I just wanted to make it clear that our most current distributions are _not_ affected. I don't know why you don't think it's credible for only Joe to have the code. I was surprised at this too, and I agree it's not terribly good development practice, but that's the situation. There's nowhere else we can get that code. That's not something anyone can change, however much anyone would like to. As for shipping times, here's an exercise for you: make a rough estimate of how much EVERYTHING you own weighs, then go and get some shipping quotes for sending it all to France. I expect if you do this, you will find that you save rather a lot of money shipping it slowly rather than fast. Shipping a single item internationally in a week costs maybe $10-$50 depending on the size of the item - a noticeable amount of money, but one most people can afford. Shipping your entire _life_ internationally is a substantial expense that you do what you can to reduce. I should know, I moved from the U.K. to Canada, and a lot of my stuff is still back there because I can't afford to ship it. And for your information, I'm not a weasel. My official job description is Mandriva Club Forum Monkey. Different species entirely. :) |
| tuxchick Nov 05, 2005 12:12 PM EDT |
Adam, the missteps that Mandriva made in this are legion. It's no wonder that what should be a tiny issue has blown up into a big hairy deal. I mean come on, apparently the story is that Mandriva bought Mr. Cheek's company without doing any due diligence- Mandriva does not know what license the code it bought was originally issued under; it won't say if it's going to convert that code to GPL or other FOSS licenses; it apparently hired a developer who is too stupid and careless to have offsite backups of his own product line, and who can't say what license he assigned to his own code; and Mandriva didn't even bother to take possession of what it paid for. I do not share your cavalier attitude towards misleading press releases. Mandriva has always been a popular distribution with a large community base and lot of goodwill. Why abuse that with spin and lame excuses? See http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/792 http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/company/press/pr/mandriva_re... http://guilinux.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=79 So the real, hidden, sekkrit message is Mandriva's not going to use the code anyway, just the ideas?? Interestingly, the thread on the Lycoris forum that started the whole thing has disappeared. Really, a minor licensing squabble is not very interesting, especially since most folks trust Mandriva to do the right thing. It's all the ancillary silliness that makes it a story! |
| dcparris Nov 05, 2005 3:04 PM EDT |
"The original article implied that the Mandriva 2006 products included actual code from Lycoris and that they may therefore be infringing open source licenses." I did assume, based on the dialogue I had had to that point, that at least some Lycoris code was involved. My belief that Lycoris' code was part of Discovery/LX would imply that Mandriva actually had access to the Lycoris sources. After all, that should be part of the assets Mandriva acquired. You helped to clarify the difference between technology (in this case, ideas) and actual code. Most people would have assumed technology and code were roughly equivalent, though developers might know better. It's difficult to understand, from my perspective, why a software development company would want to wait 3-6 months for the sources to arrive in Paris, when it wanted to incorporate the "technology" in its own offerings. Seems like, unless one has a darned good memory, that one would use that source code as the basis for incorporating the technology. In other words, it honestly seems like the sources should have gone over with Mr. Cheek - not months later. Even better, why not transfer them via the Internet to a Mandriva server somewhere? It's badly mishandled, and has caused unnecessary concern among some in the community. While it may be difficult or impossible to do anything until the computers arrive in Paris, people - especially developers can learn from this. |
| AdamW Nov 05, 2005 4:46 PM EDT |
That press release was badly worded, I agree. The problem was that we wanted a phrase which would cover the inclusion of various different Things from both Conectiva and Lycoris. We couldn't use the word 'code' because there wasn't any Lycoris code (though there is Conectiva code). 'Technology' was the word we came up with. What was really included in Discovery/LX from Lycoris isn't, to be honest, an awful lot. Some graphics, I think, but the most important thing was Joe's input in the design - he was very involved in the final stages of work on the Discovery release, and he distributed late betas to members of the Lycoris community for their input and feedback. As I understand it (and I'm late to the party, so don't shoot me if I'm wrong, corrections are welcome here) the main area of concern for the Lycoris community now is Iris, the Lycoris software installer. Again as I understand it, Joe released this with a GPL license attached, but didn't provide any offer of the source. He entirely accepts that this was against the license, and in one of the emails I have that he sent as a reply to Rus's emails to people at Mandriva, he says that he does intend to rectify this breach when he has the source again. We didn't do anything with Iris in Discovery, neither with the 'idea' nor with the code, since we have our own software delivery system, urpmi / rpmdrake. There is a plan to use at least the Iris name and possibly some of the code in the future as part of the Mandriva Club, but that is in the future, and wouldn't be until the whole GPL thing is cleared up. tuxchick: I'd agree it doesn't look particularly great to buy Lycoris without being aware of this whole issue, but as far as I'm aware, that's what happened. I'm not in any way at the management level and I wasn't at all involved in the actual deal, though, so it's entirely possible I don't know the whole story...but to the best of my knowledge, no-one at Mandriva really knew about this whole controversy until Rus's first email to various Mandriva people. I certainly hadn't heard anything about it until then. As for the Lycoris forum, I think the whole thing is closed now, and redirects to the Mandriva Club forums (which is where I work). That was the plan all along, it wasn't a response to this issue, and as the forum admin I certainly wouldn't be opposed to any discussion of it on the Club forum, if people want to discuss it there. |
| AdamW Nov 05, 2005 4:49 PM EDT |
tuxchick: One final note that I forgot to mention above: it's not as much of a problem for MDV not to know about the licensing controversy as you might immediately think, though, since our policy has always been to release all the code we develop as open source, and AFAIK the Lycoris acquisition doesn't change that. So with or without this controversy, any actual Lycoris code we used would be open sourced (if it wasn't already) in any case. |
| tuxchick Nov 05, 2005 7:11 PM EDT |
thanks for the information, Adam. Remember the unofficial motto of the FOSS world: "We will end no whine before its time." |
| AdamW Nov 07, 2005 12:26 PM EDT |
This is from Joseph - he's having trouble signing up for an account so he can post it himself. Pasted directly from his email, nothing changed by me. "comments on and errors in the article: rus bayne has a significant personal interest in the dispute. he wishes to use code to fork desktop/lx. he is welcome to do so, in accordance with the appropriate licenses. with regard to the source code in 2003, it was available for paying customers the same day the binaries were released, as per gpl requirements. with regard to the adobe licensing, we rectified the problem within days of being notified and realizing the legitimacy of the notification. to our knowledge, all gpl source for desktop/Lx gold was released with the binaries. no written offer was needed, as the source was already enclosed. we have been in contact with the free software foundation, and are happily cooperating with them in regard to this issue. tuxchick: 3 months is credible [6 months is a misquote of me]. find a shipping company, any shipping company, and ask how long it takes to get a household of goods and furniture from seattle to paris. they will all tell you the same, up to three months. also, mandriva didn't need to inspect licenses on code that it never intended to use. it doesn't mean it was bad due diligence, it just means it wasn't germaine. it's also not surprising that the only source backups are in storage, as this code has not been actively developed on for more than a year. no one had requested source for it when the Iris product was shipping, and it was not anticipated that source would become required months later, especially at the time it was in transit. bad timing, yes, but that's all it was. i don't know why the forum went down. i suspect foul play, but i have no proof of it. evangelinux: you are correct, the code in question, the iris code, was never meant to be used in mandriva linux. they have their own source for their offerings on the club. they aren't waiting for the source at all, from the point of view of incorporating it into their products. their products already have the code they need, and did so before acquiring our assets. adamw: Iris is a collection of addons for Desktop/LX, some of which are GPL. this is what the fuss is all about. you are correct that this code forms, by design, an exact 0% of the code in Mandriva Linux. This, plus the fact that the code in question is so old, was why we were caught be surprise for this issue. all: i think the agitators are just trying to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. yes, lycoris didn't release source to iris when we should have. when we noticed the breach, we promised to correct it as soon as we can. that's still our statement, and still our intention. thanks! joe" |
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