On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Michael Meeuwisse <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm really not in the mood to dredge up old memories regarding the 'bad' > stuff. But as I said, I'm not going to shut up about them and only show some > glorified positive bit of history. People were curious what happened, so I > told the story. My version of it anyway, and uncensored. Since I was > absolutely sure you'd not like it I even jotted down a PPS and left out > names of the people involved. If you feel it needs correcting, be my guest. > But don't try to pin it on me.
What I'm pinning on you is the disinformation that you're spreading. It's an "amazing coincidence" that you decide to pull this stunt (which directly or indirectly lead to the Phoronix article) right as we're trying to get the project going again. It looks like you're just trying to stir up trouble. Same as when you decided to publicly post about this on the mailing list the first time around, rather than asking me about it privately, where I would have explained it to you in as much detail as you required. Our decision to collaborate with Tech Source was very carefully considered and controlled. Under no circumstances were we compromising any ethical principles. We simply agreed to allow them to contribute anonymously, at their request. You, on the other hand, have acted thoughtlessly. It appears that, by your rules, no company should ever be allowed to contribute anonymously to a FOSS project, and if you catch them in the act, you're going to take it upon yourself to expose them. That's active interference on your part, and it's not ethical at all. Why do you feel that it's improper for a company to contribute anonymously to a FOSS project? > > There's a dutch proverb along the lines of; When two quarrel both are in the > wrong. And I want this to be clear. I'm not saying it was entirely OGP's > fault, I'm not saying it was entirely mine. I just want to point out that a > lot of things went wrong, boiling down to management and sheer politics, or > as you say, even NDA's. Fact remains that somebody at some point directed me > to the available (!) commercial product, in a time OGP was struggling hard > to get things running. Sure it was expected that being open source hardware, > at some point a company would spin off it's own variety. But we were > thoroughly beaten to the market, See. This is part of your problem. You didn't take any amount of time to try to figure out what kind of product the Raptor 4000 was or what its relationship go OGD1 really was. You saw that they looked similar, jumped to wild conclusions, and decided to make groundless accusations. We weren't beaten to any kind of market, because the OGP was never going to develop any product for high-end air traffic control display systems. There is no way you could ever have afforded to buy a Raptor 4000 card, and you wouldn't have liked the GPU in there anyhow because it's specialized to ATC, not anything like what the OGP is interested in. There is absolutely nothing about the R4000 that interfered in any way with OGD1. None. > killing off any chance the project got > capturing a niche, and you among others KNEW THIS. The entire goal of the > project had been to build an open source solution from the ground up, to > PREVENT the problems with reverse engineering drivers for nvidia / amd, and > here we were, again with a piece of hardware that had already hit the market > but simply wasn't open source supported yet. And to make matters worse, > commercial entities were able to get their hands on it, while the open > source community couldn't! None of your assertions here make any sense. There was no reverse engineering, and it was never going to be necessary. Neither I nor you knows what you're talking about. > > So I tossed it on the mailing list, and your reply? NDA. Ok fine. But the > I've seen the thing. How can I break anyone's NDA on that? How is that > unethical? Were you just expecting me to look the other way? "Oh yeah I know > that model, it just doesn't exist yet, must've hallucinated it". And I > agree, I could've handled it more gracefully than flat out tossing it in the > mailing list. But I had something close to a panic attack, and I'm certain > you did too after you noticed I found out. You panicked. And then you didn't stop to think before acting. Not very professional, not very mature. You knew full well that I worked for the company that made that card. Did you think I wouldn't be fully informed about what was going on? I was directly INVOLVED in it, for the good of the OGP, for the good of Free Software, and all completely ethical and legal. Did you think for an instant that I would have continued to work for them had they done something seriously unethical? We have a contract with them, and I could have sued them big time for violating it. But the truth is that Tech Source did far more for us than merely an IP exchange. No, no! The OGD1 would never have existed without their help! The engineering cost of developing the IP we exchanged was about even. But for us to develop Verilog code for the OGP only required free tools, while we had no choice but to use expensive, non-free tools to develop a 10-layer PCB. They let us use their equipment and other resources COMPLETELY FOR FREE. There's no way we could have afforded a Veribest license. YOU weren't willing to pay for it. But they were very kind to let us use their stuff. Why do you repay their kindness with accusations of wrong-doing? BTW, would it bother you to know that Andy, Howard, and I paid, out of our own pockets, at $120/hour, another former Tech Source employee (acting as a contractor) to make additions to the OGD1 design that we ourselves were not skilled enough to make? OMG! Some of us contributors PAID MONEY (that our wives didn't necessarily want us to spend) to have some of the OGD1 design completed for us. Oh, the HORROR! The fact is, we pulled together whatever resources we needed in order to make a 100% open source graphics card development platform. But for some reason, you appear to want to make us look bad for having accomplished it. > But really, did that even matter? Sooner or later somebody else would've > found out who hadn't signed a NDA (I didn't do the discovery either, I was > just informed by a friend) and brought it in the spotlight. It just happened > to be me opening up this pandora's box. You are very arrogant. You are not, by any means, the first person to figure out the connection with Tech Source. Other more rational people were aware of my connection to Tech Source and were also aware that there was some IP going open source that we were not necessarily skilled to make ourselves, and that there was no other likely source. You were not the first person to contact me about it. Other people got explanations that they were satisfied with. Sensible people who came to know about Tech Source's contributions were GRATEFUL for the help! > This mail is getting far too long already. I'll just conclude with that what > I did I think wasn't unethical. I just asked for clarification, which > happened to be some 'big secret'. You did NOT merely ask for clarification. Other people had done that before you and got it. Personally, I thought it would be good publicity for Tech Source to share their involvement, but they didn't want it. What was I to do? Turn down free help on the grounds that I couldn't share it? That's stupid. No, what you did, was post an accusatory message to the mailing list for all the world to see and make it look like we or they were doing something horrible. > Shit hit the fan, yes, but the fan and the > shit were both there, and it was a matter of time before it did. And I also > think things got wildly blown out of proportions, but hey, that's only > human. It just still irks me that we were kept in the dark, and when it got > out, I was supposedly the boogyman. Why do you feel that anyone had the right to this information? Why do you feel that YOU PERSONALLY had any right to this information? That's what I don't get. Everything we did is 100% open source. That was our requirement. Everything we did is completely legal. If someone anonymously contributes to a FOSS project, it is your business to use their contribution and appreciate it. It is not your business to go poking around trying to find out who contributed it. They have every right to remain anonymous. You have no rights here at all. What you're doing right now is tantamount to tabloid journalism, putting together half-truths to make something bad out of something innocuous. > I still think OGP did some great things (which I also mentioned earlier) and > had a blast contributing, things like the LinuxTag booth etc, but after that > particular bitch fight we had I was done and moved on with my life. But for some reason an article appears on Phoronix with more of your disinformation. Given the timing, it looks like you have some agenda to damage the project just as we're trying to get it going again. Why do you want to cause trouble for us? > > I also like to point out that after all these years I'm still on this > mailing list, mostly idling along (or in your words, "telling everyone"), > because I do still want to see OGP succeed. But not with my help. What is amazes me is that, given how little you personally contributed to the OGP (in comparison to so many other major contributors who have always been happy with our arrangements), you feel you have some right to judge how we went about our business. One might wonder if you're just jealous of our success. But why should you be? Project VGA didn't have the same resources we had, and OGD1 was developed by much more experienced engineers. No one thinks you're incompetent for having trouble making a working PCB on the first pass. I couldn't have done it! In any case, I fully supported your approach and was happy to offer any of our IP for you to use. Indeed, I was hoping that your card would work out, because our "movement" of open graphics cards would have benefitted greatly from your much less expensive option. Indeed, in retrospect, your scaled-down design was a MUCH better idea than OGD1 was. And in any case, you've since then chosen to change focus and study Cognitive Science. Cognitive Science is one of my absolute favorite disciplines, and I'm jealous of you, in a way, that you have had more opportunity to study it. So, to conclude, I would like to respectfully request that you stop making unfounded accusations and publicly correct your factual errors. We don't deserve to have our reputation sullied. -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
