Copyright Infringement in the AmigaOS Software Development K
  • MorphOS Developer
    Piru
    Posts: 576 from 2003/2/24
    From: finland, the l...
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:

    What's same is the visible selected area when clicking a timezone (timezones_big.png, timezones_small.ilbm). So MOS timezone_<n>.png where probably created based on AROS timezone image. The MOS images are also the exact same size as the AROS _big images). And take a look at MOS's "mask.png".

    Interesting theory, but looking at the graphics closely reveals that they're not the same. In particular Greenland is much fatter in MorphOS mask.png, and Kashmir region is dithered in AROS one (indicating the dispute between Pakistan and India and their respective time zones GMT+5.5 and GMT+5 hours), whereas the MorphOS one uses single color.

    Talk about making a political stand! ;)

    [ Edited by Piru 12.09.2015 - 02:16 ]
  • »12.09.15 - 01:15
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  • MorphOS Developer
    itix
    Posts: 1516 from 2003/2/24
    From: Finland
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:
    For example in the sources of some of the keymap files which are all based on AROS "skeleton", the AROS copyright was deleted and replaced with MorphOS copyright. No problem for me whatsoever and I would never complain about it.


    You must mean these keymaps:

    pc104_al.c (added in 2010)
    pc104_cz.c (added in 2007)
    pc104_cz_qwerty.c (added in 2007)

    It seems that Albanian keymap is derived from Czech keymap and Czech keymap is derived from some other keymap. Since other keymaps have AROS copyrights I dont see any reason why Czech keymap shouldnt.
    1 + 1 = 3 with very large values of 1
  • »12.09.15 - 01:40
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Georg
    Posts: 106 from 2004/4/7
    Quote:

    Piru wrote:
    Interesting theory, but looking at the graphics closely reveals that they're not the same. In particular Greenland is much fatter in MorphOS mask.png, and Kashmir region is dithered in AROS one (indicating the dispute between Pakistan and India and their respective time zones GMT+5.5 and GMT+5 hours), whereas the MorphOS one uses single color.



    They are largely the same. Of course some editing was/is necessary to have a good match with the corresponding earthmap image. The "source" timezone image on which the AROS one is based required heavy editing itself because of all the text/outline "overlay" which was there. Some rectangular areas (some islands in the middle of the oceans) were replaced by random hand painted pixel shapes. In the MOS timezone mask image there are pixel perfect copies of this.

    This is no complaint or accusation. I have no problem whatsoever with this. The point is just that I find it a bit silly to require crediting/permission/copyright mention/hand rewriting of headers/... from others for every little thing which is freely accessible anyway, if you know that by looking hard (or not so hard) you probably will find cases where your "side" didn't always follow these rules either each and every time for every stupid thing.
  • »12.09.15 - 10:06
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  • ASiegel
    Posts: 1370 from 2003/2/15
    From: Central Europe
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:
    The point is just that I find it a bit silly to require crediting/permission/copyright mention/hand rewriting of headers/... from others for every little thing which is freely accessible anyway, if you know that by looking hard (or not so hard) you probably will find cases where your "side" didn't always follow these rules either each and every time for every stupid thing.


    There is a huge difference between carelessly forgetting to provide credit and very deliberately removing copyright information from what is otherwise an identical copy of someone elseĀ“s work.
  • »12.09.15 - 10:26
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Nadir
    Posts: 157 from 2003/3/17
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:

    They are largely the same. Of course some editing was/is necessary to have a good match with the corresponding earthmap image. The "source" timezone image on which the AROS one is based required heavy editing itself because of all the text/outline "overlay" which was there. Some rectangular areas (some islands in the middle of the oceans) were replaced by random hand painted pixel shapes. In the MOS timezone mask image there are pixel perfect copies of this





    I honestly don't recall exactly how the polygon coordinates or the time zone shapes were created (I didn't do it mysel). However, from your explanation it is possible that it is somehow derived from the aros image. I will therefore make sure that this is added to the version string of the mprefs. In general, we have always been very grateful for the parts of Aros that we have been able to use (in line with the license). We also make changes available accordingly. Moreover, we have also tried to acknowledge Aros as much as possible in MorphOS, including generic attributions in the About... window.

    I don't think it is now good to imply that it's somehow fine to use MorphOS work, in violation with its license while making an active decision to hide the origin of the work..

    Best,

    Nicholai
  • »12.09.15 - 11:26
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    KennyR
    Posts: 874 from 2003/3/4
    From: #AmigaZeux, Gu...
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:
    This is no complaint or accusation. I have no problem whatsoever with this. The point is just that I find it a bit silly to require crediting/permission/copyright mention/hand rewriting of headers/... from others for every little thing which is freely accessible anyway, if you know that by looking hard (or not so hard) you probably will find cases where your "side" didn't always follow these rules either each and every time for every stupid thing.



    I think you are missing the bigger picture. If they'd simply have asked, it wouldn't have been a problem. Even if they'd just done it, it wouldn't have been much of an issue either.

    What makes people take umbrage is that Hyperion have been calling MorphOS theft of Amiga source and IP for 15 years, and now they're returning to rip it off.

    And now Costel has apparently apologised for it, while immediately he's been undermined by what is presumably Hermans. Read into it and Hermans not only making Costel look like a fool, he's just given everyone on the planet an open invitation to also pirate OS4 autodocs -- "because they're not copyrightable".

    I think it's clear who is the source of all the bad feeling in the community. We should have gotten shot of Hermans years ago. He's done the platform incalculable damage.
  • »12.09.15 - 14:19
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Yasu
    Posts: 1724 from 2012/3/22
    From: Stockholm, Sweden
    Hermans serms to suffer from Legalese Tourettes.
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  • »12.09.15 - 14:43
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    polluks
    Posts: 779 from 2007/10/23
    From: Gelsenkirchen,...
    In 2010 I ported pc104_al.c which is, indeed, AROS based.
    Please add the missing copyright notice!
    Pegasos II G4: MorphOS 3.9, Zalman M220W · iMac G5 12,1 17", MorphOS 3.18
    Power Mac G3: OSX 10.3 · PowerBook 5,8: OSX 10.5, MorphOS 3.18
  • »12.09.15 - 17:38
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    TheMagicM
    Posts: 1217 from 2003/6/17
    I guess I can borrow OS4 to run under WinUAE. All is fair....
  • »12.09.15 - 20:15
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  • MorphOS Developer
    CISC
    Posts: 619 from 2005/8/27
    From: the land with ...
    Just a quick response to other questions regarding our SDK (I won't bother discussing the nonsense spouted by Ben Hermans (who obviously slept through law school) and his cronies as those speak for themselves to people who care to stay informed):

    I was indeed the one who initially wrote our includes, by hand, using the NDK 3.1 and AROS includes as reference, anything else would have been counter-productive and legally unnecessary.

    The reason ordering is largely the same (but not always for reasons I'll come back to) is because I used diff (-ub) to ensure I did not produce spelling-errors, which would be catastrophic (and potentially undiscovered for years) in an SDK.

    All partitioning or reordering done in the includes are for logical reasons (either because of version divide or other imperatives), f.ex. I recall shuffling a few things around so they made more sense to anyone using the includes as documentation (which at the time was the only official documentation we would have).


    - CISC

    [Edit: Changed "minions" to "cronies" after rightful complaints from those adorable (yet "evil") little yellow buggers]

    [ Edited by CISC 16.09.2015 - 07:53 ]
  • »14.09.15 - 08:26
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    kamelito
    Posts: 103 from 2011/9/21
    No offence here but Morphos, Aros and OS4 wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of Amiga/CBM. It is easier to take as a base an existing OS or use existing codebase (read OS4), than to create a brand new operating system from scratch.
    I'd love to be proven wrong and see the "QBox" happening with the upcoming ISA change.
    It is time to let the past behind even if you can borrow concepts and take them further.

    A bit like what Be did with BeOS in the 90's, but today.

    Regards
    Kamelito
  • »17.09.15 - 12:28
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    takemehomegrandma
    Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:

    kamelito wrote:
    No offence here but Morphos, Aros and OS4 wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of Amiga/CBM.


    Since those (in the beginning) were reimplementations of Commodore's OS this is true in a general sense; without Commodore there would have been nothing to reimplement.

    But when it comes to MorphOS and AROS, the well documented 3.1 API is the only direct connection, only OS4 re-used the actual Commodore 3.1 code.

    Regarding the amount of "hard work of Commodore", this is very far from the accumulated hard work the MorphOS Team (with contributions and licensed SW) put into MorphOS 3.9, Commodores 3.1 is trivial in comparison! While the MorphOS Team in the beginning recreated the same 3.1 level OS on their own (meaning about the same level of work load as Commodore, documentation aside), this has been tremendously extended by USB, RTG, RTA, printing system, new memory system, new file systems, MUI, the Ambient, Reggae, "NG" DOS, 3D GFX, Networking, WiFi, Shell, the Radeon drivers (and a lot of other drivers), and support for more than 80 HW systems, including lots of laptops, for whitch new technology has been developed that not yet exists on other "NG" systems, like battery/power management, CPU throtteling, multi finger/gesture trackpad support, etc, etc, etc. All this and more (and it is *a lot*) makes MorphOS its own OS, on its own merits! The 3.1 (API) was merely a starting point a long, looong time ago, and the accumulated man-hours of work that Commodore put into their OS during its entire life time are ridiculously few compared to the accumulated man-hours that has been put into MorphOS 3.9. The Workbench 3.1 floppies were nothing in comparison. Obviously.

    That's why people find it offending when Hyperion comes with their ridiculous claims that "MorphOS is illegal" FUD BS.





    [ Edited by takemehomegrandma 17.09.2015 - 16:03 ]
    MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)
    MorphOS NG will be AROS done right! :-)
  • »17.09.15 - 15:52
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    kamelito
    Posts: 103 from 2011/9/21
    I'm'sure they worked hard but Aros and Open Source OS's and drivers helped there.
    Amiga/CBM didn't have that and You can't blame them for technology that happened after. At least RTG was documented not sure if partially implemented.
    SMP and full memory protection is the minimum don't care if it's for another box.
    Like in psychology you've to kill the father to became an independent adult. Don't remember what should happen to the Mother.
    Kamelito

    [ Edité par kamelito 17.09.2015 - 16:48 ]

    [ Edité par kamelito 17.09.2015 - 16:52 ]
  • »17.09.15 - 16:46
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Quote:

    kamelito wrote:
    No offence here but Morphos, Aros and OS4 wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of Amiga/CBM. It is easier to take as a base an existing OS or use existing codebase (read OS4), than to create a brand new operating system from scratch.
    I'd love to be proven wrong and see the "QBox" happening with the upcoming ISA change.
    It is time to let the past behind even if you can borrow concepts and take them further.

    A bit like what Be did with BeOS in the 90's, but today.

    Regards
    Kamelito



    I think that all the work that Commodore did to improve the Amiga from 1984 to 1994 is surpassed by what Jay Miner and friends accomplished prior to the acquisition by Commodore, even though the time spent is double, or perhaps almost triple. Commodore did a very poor job at improving the Amiga (OS, software and hardware), compared to the genius shown to invent the Amiga "in the beginning".

    I agree with TMHG, that the MorphOS Dev. Team has done as much, or more than the huge company that once was Commodore in their first 10 years of working on MorphOS, compared to the 10 years that Commodore worked on the Amiga.

    That is an impressive feat for the 1 to 2 dozen MorphOS Dev. Team members and contributors working only in their spare time, when you think of the hundreds of people employed by Commodore working 40 hours per week.

    [ Edited by amigadave 17.09.2015 - 07:52 ]
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »17.09.15 - 16:51
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Yasu
    Posts: 1724 from 2012/3/22
    From: Stockholm, Sweden
    I would have thought more people at a.org and AW would at least think it's proper to credit Piru for his work. At least.

    [ Edited by Yasu 18.09.2015 - 08:46 ]
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  • »18.09.15 - 08:45
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    redrumloa
    Posts: 1424 from 2003/4/13
    Quote:

    ASiegel wrote:
    Quote:

    XzIt wrote:
    I have to agree this is silly.
    and maybe a bounty is in order, if they keep ignoring it...

    I doubt throwing money at attorneys is going to solve much. Some might argue the involvement of lawyers has caused plenty of unnecessary harm as it is.


    I disagree. These people are nothing but common criminals and they need to be held accountable. I'd be willing to put money where my mouth is and donate to a legal fund. I'm not wealthy, but if you set up a monthly donation system to put a lawyer on retainer, I'd donate a small amount monthly. Hopefully others would too.

    Also, isn't there any method to report this IP theft to law enforcement? I can't speak for anything outside of the US, but I know here you could at least report it to several agencies including the FBI Intellectual Property Theft Division. Whether anything is done or not may be a different story, but it is worth reporting. Isn't there any agencies over there?

    Don't let these criminals keep getting away with their IP theft.
  • »18.09.15 - 18:25
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Quote:

    Yasu wrote:
    I would have thought more people at a.org and AW would at least think it's proper to credit Piru for his work. At least.


    Sadly, both those sites have been over run by a very vocal minority that no longer create productive forum threads, or make sensible comments on existing threads (most of the time).

    Although I rarely visit either site any longer, when I do, it just seems to be the same fighting and complaining by the same dozen or so members who dominate all threads with their crap, while the majority of the members have either left, or just lurk and never bother to post any comments to the forums.

    This has nothing to do with the owners, or moderators, who occasionally attempt to reign in the trouble makers and restore some kind of order there, but it has more to do with the social disease that has been created by the security some individuals feel being anonymous (usually) and safely hidden behind their computer screens and keyboards, writing things they would never have the courage to say face-to-face, or in a public place.

    I don't blame Piru for not posting to either of those sites anymore (or only very rarely).
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »18.09.15 - 18:28
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12079 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > I don't blame Piru for not posting to either of those sites anymore (or only very rarely).

    He has never been an amigaworld.net member, and he left amiga.org in 2012 because of the owner's behaviour.

    http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65960
  • »18.09.15 - 21:52
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:
    > I don't blame Piru for not posting to either of those sites anymore (or only very rarely).

    He has never been an amigaworld.net member, and he left amiga.org in 2012 because of the owner's behaviour.

    http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65960


    I didn't know he had never been an AW.net member, so thanks for that info. I had not seen him post anything for a very long time at A.org, so it does not surprise me to read that he has stopped posting there since 2012 due to the previous owner's behavior.

    I am glad my spam filter on my email account prevents me from receiving the automated password reset emails from either AW.net, or A.org, as it keeps me from posting to either site, since I erased all cookies and have forgotten my passwords. Saves me tons of time by NOT posting to those sites, and soon I will be cured from wasting any time even reading them, which means that I may eventually make some progress on learning how to program. ;-)

    [ Edited by amigadave 18.09.2015 - 22:19 ]
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »19.09.15 - 07:17
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    double post

    [ Edited by amigadave 18.09.2015 - 22:19 ]
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »19.09.15 - 07:18
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  • MorphOS Developer
    itix
    Posts: 1516 from 2003/2/24
    From: Finland
    Quote:

    itix wrote:
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:
    For example in the sources of some of the keymap files which are all based on AROS "skeleton", the AROS copyright was deleted and replaced with MorphOS copyright. No problem for me whatsoever and I would never complain about it.


    You must mean these keymaps:

    pc104_al.c (added in 2010)
    pc104_cz.c (added in 2007)
    pc104_cz_qwerty.c (added in 2007)

    It seems that Albanian keymap is derived from Czech keymap and Czech keymap is derived from some other keymap. Since other keymaps have AROS copyrights I dont see any reason why Czech keymap shouldnt.



    Those three keymaps have AROS (c) copyrights now. I add a note to readme to keep AROS (c) if someone is creating "new" keymap using any existing keymap as base with AROS (c) copyrights.
    1 + 1 = 3 with very large values of 1
  • »19.09.15 - 08:46
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  • Moderator
    Kronos
    Posts: 2239 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:

    kamelito wrote:
    It is easier to take as a base an existing OS or use existing codebase (read OS4), than to create a brand new operating system from scratch.



    And how do you come to that conclusion ?

    Creating a new OS means you don't have to consider 20 old design choices and mantain compability, but instead can use all the newest tech and concepts.

    The only things that are easier with reimplementing are that there is a common goal allready set (less infighting bout design choices) and that you many be abble to get some base momentum with users.


    As for "RTG being documented", the only thing C= did here was defining a way to add screenmodes, doing actual RTG required either some nasty hacks (like the WBEmus for very early GFX-cards) or reimplementing great parts of the OS (as done by CGX and later on by P96).
  • »19.09.15 - 10:39
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  • MorphOS Developer
    itix
    Posts: 1516 from 2003/2/24
    From: Finland
    Quote:

    kamelito wrote:
    No offence here but Morphos, Aros and OS4 wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of Amiga/CBM. It is easier to take as a base an existing OS or use existing codebase (read OS4), than to create a brand new operating system from scratch.



    As far as AmigaOS is concerned it is probably easier to write from scratch than base on existing code base.

    On the other hand, MorphOS was not entirely written from scratch. It uses AROS code base (as discussed in this thread and see http://www.morphos-team.net/downloads), it uses code base from other sources, including CGX, MUI and ixemul, borrows some other code from general open source community (jpg, png, freetype and so on) and many tools are coming from existing code base (MUIProCalc, Mysticview, DiskSpeed, Snoopium, PFSDoctor, Defrag). MorphOS is mix of old and new Amiga code.
    1 + 1 = 3 with very large values of 1
  • »19.09.15 - 11:45
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Yasu
    Posts: 1724 from 2012/3/22
    From: Stockholm, Sweden
    But isn't AROS written from scratch? If so it's still not technically based on AOS 3.1.
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  • »19.09.15 - 13:19
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    kamelito
    Posts: 103 from 2011/9/21
    @Itix

    By from scratch I mean not following an existing design as a blueprint, I'm not talking about reimpleminting an existing API based on existing API specification.

    You take a white page and design the all thing, you can of course borrow ideas from others that you know work and build something new for the better, because existing OSes do not satisfy you entirely.

    The work done by the Morphos team might be on par or beyond what CBM did but I'm wondering what you think of the work done by only one, read SkyOS, too bad it's not developed anymore (Just read an interview of the author he seems to have earn a lot of money creating games for the Iphone, so who can blame him). At the beginning Atheos now Syllabe was also done by just one man as a AmigaOS successor.


    Kamelito
  • »19.09.15 - 13:39
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