WebSite Information > Article Discussions

OS4 Kernel Discussion

(1/3) > >>

Martin Iturbide:
Hi

I was criticized at my Warpstock intervention because I told that the OS4 kernel was illegal (depending on the copyright laws of the country) since it was based on leaked source code of the IBM's OS/2 Warp 4 kernel.

OS4User told me on IRC that I was wrong and that I should correct that but it didn't not provide me any more feedback about it.

Even that I can found some exception according to the US copyright law for the OS4 kernel to be "legal" for some specific uses, I would like to give the opportunity to the OS4 kernel people to explain me in the last years if there had been any changes on the OS4 project and if it no longer using IBM's leaked source code.

Regards

RickCHodgin:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on September 24, 2018, 06:02:28 pm ---Hi

I was criticized at my Warpstock intervention because I told that the OS4 kernel was illegal (depending on the copyright laws of the country) since it was based on leaked source code of the IBM's OS/2 Warp 4 kernel.

OS4User told me on IRC that I was wrong and that I should correct that but it didn't not provide me any more feedback about it.

Even that I can found some exception according to the US copyright law for the OS4 kernel to be "legal" for some specific uses, I would like to give the opportunity to the OS4 kernel people to explain me in the last years if there had been any changes on the OS4 project and if it no longer using IBM's leaked source code.

Regards

--- End quote ---

They told me the same thing on IRC chat, but IIRC they never expanded on it, and never answered how it was legal.  I think they said the same thing here, but also never explained how it was legal.

It is here:  https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,983.msg13609.html#msg13609

Roderick Klein:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on September 24, 2018, 06:02:28 pm ---Hi

I was criticized at my Warpstock intervention because I told that the OS4 kernel was illegal (depending on the copyright laws of the country) since it was based on leaked source code of the IBM's OS/2 Warp 4 kernel.

OS4User told me on IRC that I was wrong and that I should correct that but it didn't not provide me any more feedback about it.

Even that I can found some exception according to the US copyright law for the OS4 kernel to be "legal" for some specific uses, I would like to give the opportunity to the OS4 kernel people to explain me in the last years if there had been any changes on the OS4 project and if it no longer using IBM's leaked source code.

Regards

--- End quote ---

From what I have seen over the years the OS/4 kernel started out as updated debug kernel 104a.
First of all the IBM license OS/2 comes with simply does not allow reverse engenering and as far I can tell they have done that. The license of IBM does not allow this. I do not know what Russian copyright law has in terms of provisons to allow you to legally reverse engineer a software product.

Also since Russia ratified the Bern Copyright convention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

I do not know if that means that US copyright law applies to the OS/2 product as that was the first country it was made "public". Also what is written in the orginal OS/2 Warp license agreement IBM published in Russia ?
Did it allow you to reverse engineer the kernel ?

Lets just say I would be very surprised if it would...

Roderick

OS4User:

--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on September 24, 2018, 06:02:28 pm ---...because I told that the OS4 kernel ....  was based on leaked source code of the IBM's OS/2 Warp 4 kernel.

--- End quote ---

Hi Martin

AFAIK, it was Merlin (4.0) source code which leaked from IBM. But OS/4 is a patch for Aurora (4.5) kernel.  Meanwhile, if you have any prove that OS/4 is based on leaked Merlin, pls, show them to us.

Martin Iturbide:
Hi OS4User.

Since OS4 source code is close and it is not available to the public, it can not be compared to the OS/2 Warp 4.0 (Merlin) leaked source code. If that comparison can be finally done it will finally close the discussion and complete remove that issue from your project.

About Roderick claims, I think he is referring "reverse engineering from binaries", I really don't know any reverse engineering method for the OS/2 kernel (if anybody knows that please let me know on public or private). On my limited knowledge on this point I haven't seen anything that can produce something useful for the kernel and drivers.

You say that OS/4 is a patch for Aurora 4.5, which means that the OS4 kernel uses IBM binaries, so to use the OS4 kernel anybody must have a legal OS/2 license. (We had that discussion before). 
But is the source code of the patch complete property of the developers (which I don't know the names)?
Or did they use any of the Merlin's leaked source code to produce that patch?
Can at least the developers confirm that there is no leaked IBM kernel source code on their binary patch, since they project is close source?

Regards

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version