i think they only made the right decision. They realized that they can't finish the project themselves so they made it open source to give it a chance by other developers. i saw those guys in Neuss and i don't think that nobody of them deserve that kind of harsh and rude accusations and bad talking.

Quote:

They made the right decision by releasing an early alpha, collecting bounty funds, and holding the source hostage for several years until it was near worthless?

But hey don't ask me, go ask the bounty contributers. I saw far more negative feedback about TW from bounty contributers, aka OS4 users, than I saw from the outside. If they were working in good faith, at the very least they would have released the full source plus docs immediately after collecting bounty funds. They also wouldn't try blocking collaborative efforts that would primarily benefit bounty contributers, aka OS4 users.

The same people who dropped good hard earned money on TW, had to turn around and drop even more money to get an actual working browser (OWB). I don't blame them for having a bad taste in their mouth.

[ Edited by redrumloa 02.11.2015 - 13:32 ]

>> The Friedens have nothing to do with the copyright infringement case nor am I aware
>> that Timberwolf infringes on anyone's copyright.

> you aren't really trying to claim that the Wonder Twins are acting in anyone's best
> interest with TW besides themselves?

No, I'm claiming that the Friedens have nothing to do with the copyright infringement case and that Timberwolf does not infringe on anyone's copyright.

> You don't really think they are acting in the best interest of the bounty contributers,
> the end users, or the OSS community in general, do you?

No, I think that the Friedens have nothing to do with the copyright infringement case and that Timberwolf does not infringe on anyone's copyright.

> i don't think that nobody of them deserve that kind of harsh and rude accusations
> and bad talking.

;-)

I don't ever remember bad mouthing the Friedens.
In fact, its kind of amusing that Hyperion may not own all the code that the brothers have written.
Some of it may just be licensed.

Now Timberwolf, its unfinished, and its a dated port.

> Hyperion may not own all the code that the brothers have written.
> Some of it may just be licensed.

Yes, as has been confirmed in court by declaratory action:

http://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/82/4.pdf (pages 32-34)

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Since Ben is a lawyer, and it cost's him nothing but a bit of his time to file papers in any court he is licensed to practice in, I would not taunt him into an action that might result in myself being fined or possibly jailed. Somehow I don't think the defense of "He did it first" would stand up well in any court.

> Since Ben is a lawyer [...], I would not taunt him into an action [...]

An infringement on Timberwolf's license wouldn't have anything to do with him personally or Hyperion as a company as Timberwolf has been a private project of the Frieden brothers.

This is an ugly story from the beginning... :(
Fighting, instead of helping eachother.

What I not really understand is how would they prevent the others to use their modifications, since Timberwolf's copyright is GPL or something similar. It doesn't matter who payed for anything and what was in the bounty, a GPL protected code should remain open sourced after any modifications. But I'm not a lawyer...

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the usefulness of Timberwolf for us.

> Timberwolf's copyright is GPL or something similar.

Firefox is dual-licensed (L)GPL and MPL. For Timberwolf, MPL was chosen:

"The source code of the port will be made available only as far as the MPL requires it, i.e. all modified source code files will be available for interested parties, but new files will not. This is in accordance with the requirements of the Mozilla Public License."
http://www.amigabounty.net/index.php?function=viewproject&projectid=44

More info:
http://raw.githubusercontent.com/tfrieden/timberwolf/master/toolkit/content/license.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Public_License

> a GPL protected code should remain open sourced after any modifications.

MPL is less strict in this regard.

Quote:

Yeah, to be honest I don't think so too that this behaviour will lead anywhere. And agree with that we don't really need that code.I mentioned only this, because the fisrt reaction of the OS4 side was so laughable. They just tried to tell nonsense stories, and why Pirus code is not in under copyright. Now i don't see any similarity from the Os4 branch to explain why is this TW code is not under copyright.

> https://github.com/tfrieden/timberwolf

This original repository was deleted somewhen between June 2018 and March 2019. Backup repositories:

https://github.com/xet7/timberwolf
https://github.com/sahlberg/timberwolf (with restored commit history)