Hi Peter,
We're not talking about "trivial changes" that would make such a tool fail.
FreeRDP is following the official Microsoft specifications. We can easily
see the difference between rdesktop and FreeRDP for that reason: rdesktop
pretty much remained the same after the specs were published, while we used
them to rewrite everything.
Code made according to the specs are therefore not under your copyright,
unless you want to claim copyright on the official Microsoft specifications.
I have put special care in making the code as close as possible to the
specifications.
Now if you want to keep claiming copyright on our code base, then please
point us to code which you found to be infringing on your copyright. Sorry,
but you cannot continue to simply claim to own copyright on our code base
without ever pointing where it is, this is being dishonest, and you know it.
We have done a lot of efforts to respect your copyright, but you are now
crossing the line. You need to respect our copyright as well.
Obviously, you do not agree to the license change, and we respect that: we
are disposed to fully remove all of your code from our code base. The fact
that your copyrighted code used to be part of that code base does not
prevent me and the rest of the FreeRDP developers from having rights on the
code that they own. By making vague claims that copyrighted code is still
left in our code base, therefore it must remain GPL, you are blocking the
entire FreeRDP community from moving forward. Not only this is a selfish
move, but it is very damageable. Simply look at how development activities
dropped last week. Maybe you didn't notice it on rdesktop-devel, but that's
because there is normally not that much happening anyway there.
Making claims without backing them does not necessarily prove anything, but
it does hurt by putting a cloud of uncertainty over the project. You will
always have the ability to make claims which you can't support. On the other
hand, we do have claims that we can support, while you have failed to
support yours so far.
You are now given a choice: you either start playing nice with us, or I will
have no other choice but to consider the current situation as a desperate
attempt at killing the FreeRDP project. So far, you have shown no intent of
solving the matter. We have shown a lot of good will and efforts, yet you
keep on insisting on the same things. I think it has become obvious to most
people ready this by now that FreeRDP is not something you want to see under
a permissive license, and your degree of insistence suggests that you might
have personal reasons for not wanting us to exist in such way. Your hatred
for us, however, does not remove the rights that we have on our own code.
To make it very clear: we don't want your code, we never wanted it, and we
will never want it. You can't force us to use copyrighted code that we don't
want, especially if you want to impose us the terms and conditions that
would come with it, in this case, the GPL for all of us. You can only impose
those conditions if we actually use your copyrighted code. If we don't, then
we don't owe you anything, end of the story. By failing to back your claims,
you are attempting to impose us your preferred terms and conditions, while
not telling us where your code is so we can safely remove it and not be
bound to its terms.
Peter, man up a little bit, this is obviously not fair play.
Best regards,
- Marc-Andre
P.S.: I insist, we will go all the way through this, even if you want to put
yourself in the way by all means possible. You will only hurt yourself, so
please stop and let's work on solving the issue like big kids do.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Peter Åstrand <astr...@cendio.se> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2011, Jürgen Lüters wrote:
>
> copyright law at least in europe, northamerica and japan protects the
>> work computer program in our case. The law does protect programms in
>> binary and text form.
>> The law does _not_ protect ideas and concepts.
>>
>> Several programs can implement the same algorithms. As long as the
>> implementation is different there is no problem. That the implenmtation
>> is different can be shown by source code comparison. Clean room
>>
>
> The fact the the "implementation is different" does not mean that you can
> escape the copyright. This "different implementation" may still be based on
> earlier, copyrighted work. A source code comparison may not show this.
>
> I'll give you an example. I downloaded ESR:s "hexdump 1.7" from
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/**hexdump/ <http://www.catb.org/~esr/hexdump/>.
> The C file is 289 lines long. Then, I changed a few variable names, removed
> the comments, changed the order of the include files and a few other trivial
> changes. With just these small changes, the "comparator" can no longer find
> any common code segments:
>
> #SCF-B 2.0
> Filtering: language
> Hash-Method: RXOR
> Matches: 0
> Merge-Program: comparator 2.8
> Normalization: line-oriented
> Shred-Size: 3
> %%
> hexdump-mine: matches=0, matchlines=0, totallines=277
> hexdump-1.7: matches=0, matchlines=0, totallines=627
> %%
>
> Does this mean that the code is now mine, that I can put my own copyright
> on it, that I can use it without obeying the original license, and that Eric
> S Raymond can no longer claim any copyright on it? No. I used his work to
> create "my different implementation". This means that I must still respect
> his copyright.
>
> So to "work on making FreeRDP show 0% match with rdesktop" does not really
> help. Even if you reach this goal, the code would still be based on earlier
> copyrighted work, and the GPL must still be respected.
>
>
> Rgds, ---
> Peter Åstrand ThinLinc Chief Developer
> Cendio AB http://www.cendio.com
> Wallenbergs gata 4
> 583 30 Linköping Phone: +46-13-21 46 00
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
> Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security
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> http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2
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>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2
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