Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#31

Post by reginaldjcooper » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:14 AM UTC

bxc89 wrote: post #20

codgercoder wrote: post #8

GPL, and probably other licenses, were constructed to work with copyright law. Such cavalier dismissal (by rxrz) is disrespecting those who created the licenses, the legal system, and the open source community, at large. We live in the real world, not "The Matrix".

There are those of us who completely disagree with copyright law. How many years have been wasted on projects like Samba because of draconian copyright? Much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source.

Wasting man-years on reimplementing software is not a large enough problem to decide that authors no longer have any rights with their product.

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#32

Post by Nursie » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:17 AM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #23

Nursie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The questions are - is it a derivative of GPL code, and if so have they distributed binaries? I don't think drivers necessarily have to be derivative of GPL code (look at, for instance, nVidia's closed source drivers and lots of Android/ARM graphics drivers).

Those are technically GPL violations, but kernel devs haven't (yet) complained much.

I've been able to find a statement from 2008 in which many kernel devs publicly said they think that closed drivers are harmful. But violations?

I'm not convinced. Got a link that might convince me?

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#33

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:17 AM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #23

Nursie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The questions are - is it a derivative of GPL code, and if so have they distributed binaries? I don't think drivers necessarily have to be derivative of GPL code (look at, for instance, nVidia's closed source drivers and lots of Android/ARM graphics drivers).

Those are technically GPL violations, but kernel devs haven't (yet) complained much.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#34

Post by effn » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:18 AM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #19

Samsung may not have intended it as such, but aren't all derivatives of GPL-licenced code also GPL by definition?

No. The authors of GPL-licensed code has no say in how other people license their code they don't own the copyright on.

Derivatives of GPL-licensed code is either: 1. GPL-licensed 2. Illegal

If it's not explicitly 1 by the license on the derived work, it becomes 2. It is not automatically "forced" into category 1.

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#35

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:19 AM UTC

bxc89 wrote: post #15

I agree with the actions of the repo maintainer. Why should we play along with unjust copyright laws? GPL sheep are just part of the problem, creating their own nest of licensing woes everytime you touch their code.

Even if you don't want to play along with copyright laws - and I can perfectly understand why one wouldn't - that's not a reason to deceive people by claiming the code to be GPL licensed and make them liable if they redistribute it.

If one wants to say "fuck copyright", putting a copyright license in the code is not the really the most appropriate way.

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#36

Post by skore » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:21 AM UTC

Svip wrote: post #22

yareally wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, this is a typical thing that goes on in the Android User development community. Lots of casual attitudes by hobbyists that modify the Linux Kernel and rattle off some sort of excuse for not posting their sources while distributing binary copies. Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, thinking that because they changed a few lines of code, they can claim to own the license to the software now…

> Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, [...] Hmmm... https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-2... : > And I don't need any permissions from anybody, I'm a big girl. Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.

> Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.

Nah, pretty sure the "I'm a big girl" is just fratboy posturing.

Otherwise I agree with the commenter next to me: Breathtaking inanity is the interesting aspect here, not gender.

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#37

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:22 AM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #23

Nursie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The questions are - is it a derivative of GPL code, and if so have they distributed binaries? I don't think drivers necessarily have to be derivative of GPL code (look at, for instance, nVidia's closed source drivers and lots of Android/ARM graphics drivers).

Those are technically GPL violations, but kernel devs haven't (yet) complained much.

[deleted]

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#38

Post by yareally » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:23 AM UTC

vog wrote: post #27

Svip wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Others end up "relicensing" similar to the guy on github, [...] Hmmm... https://github.com/rxrz/exfat-nofuse/issues/5#issuecomment-2... : > And I don't need any permissions from anybody, I'm a big girl. Fun fact: Females also do stupid stuff.

Among all aspects of that discussion, the author's gender is about the most uninteresting detail. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position."

Agreed. I didn't even take the time to find out what their gender was since it's not any related issue. "Guy" was just used in a generic sense[1].

[1] http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/generic-s...

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#39

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

reginaldjcooper wrote: post #31

bxc89 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are those of us who completely disagree with copyright law. How many years have been wasted on projects like Samba because of draconian copyright? Much simpler and cleaner to acquire the source.

Wasting man-years on reimplementing software is not a large enough problem to decide that authors no longer have any rights with their product.

Agreed, there are much better reasons for doing so.

Re: Leaked Samsung exFat driver relicensed as GPL

#40

Post by exDM69 » Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #16

Why not just use this? http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/01/23/2142213/open-source...

Apparently the Fuse-based driver hasn't got very good performance and is not quite production quality yet (according to the Phoronix article).

In addition, the person who put the leaked driver on GitHub seems to have a negative opinion on Fuse (in some of the forum threads where he's ranting), which does not seem to be based on facts.