• Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    takemehomegrandma
    Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:

    Even then it's still a difference whether the source code was obtained legally (from Stuntz, but with non-Stuntz code, so Maus/Böckelmann have been acting in good faith) or illegally.


    No no, no such thing as "good faith" is applicable here. Good faith does absolutely not make it *legal* to use other people's copyrighted materials, not in any way. Cluelessness (deliberate or not) does not put you above copyright laws. If laire, piru, kiero or jacadcaps (and probably others) should decide to make an official copyright infringement thing about this, they would probably have a pretty solid case (from change logs alone), since using their work without their explicit permission is simply illegal. How sources were *obtained* is perhaps of lesser importance, unlike the usage of them. They obviously were granted access to the source tree. Obviously. To make a MUI 3.9 port, that's for sure. In the source tree they also found the MUI4 sources. That is also obvious. Maybe they thought something in line with "hey, we've got permission to make a port of MUI period (no matter version), so let's download the MUI4 sources as well". But even the MUI4 code in 2009 contained work of others. Had I been managing a big project like MUI, I would have kept track on changes and contributions, and I see no reasons to why that wouldn't have been the case. Under any circumstances it falls onto *their* responsibility to ensure 100% IP integrity in what they release, when using external codebase. Their rather "liberal views" on things like copyright notices when it comes to MUI related files is publically proven, which could have "helped". Delete. Replace. Modus operandi. Et cetera. But this was not a 2009 affair. It was a 2015 affair. And a 2016 affair. And still counting. Had they had a valid *license* to MUI4+ (4.x+ in practice meaning "MUI NG", meaning beyond the "old world" 3.x MUI (there were major inner reworkings put into 4+)), they wouldn't have had to resort to "filling the gaps" with their own made up code, they could simply have based their port on the official sources they should have approved access to. The same with MUI5, had they really had a valid *license* to MUI5, there would have been a proper port from the official sources. But this was not the case. They created a new branch of MUI development in 2015 that was *not* the 2015 MUI, but something different, incomplete and incompatible. This while posing as the new MUI for AmigaOS developers, starting a new "official" site. Now in 2016 they released MUI 5, and with that it became even more "comical" since the major version bump to "5" was never at all about whatever classes or ui api they may have mimicked, but even more about inner workings and lower level improvements and merging with the OS. Perhaps a real MUI 5 is no longer even easily portable to systems like OS4, where MUI is something that is optionally run as a stand-alone, third party application. But paint a beef onto a cardboard sheet, and maybe it will go down just as fine together with som red wine sauce and brussel sprouts...?
    MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)
    MorphOS NG will be AROS done right! :-)
  • »13.09.16 - 21:52
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