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kernel affinity bug

Started by pasha, 2010.03.02, 23:51:28

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Andi

Quote
Okay, comrades. That might perhaps be true, but it simply doesn't fu**ing matter, because that Kernel is property of a U.S., stock noted, SOX-compliant company that employs more lawyers on their own than there are in Russia perhaps. Your laws don't apply. That kernel is illegal until IBM tells it isn't. Get it.
You reverse a principle in law off most modern countries. 'Something is illegal when it is not stated as legal' - is wrong. It's the other way around. As long as not explicitly stated illegal, it's legal!

Only having a lot of lawyers doesn't assure all things they do are legal and others doing is illegal. f.i. think about some Microsoft and Intel judgments in the early past (yes even judgments not only illegal activities never brought to the court). Sure the OS/2 I use is restricted to the license agreements of IBM but _only_ that parts that do not violate the laws of the country I'm living. See applied law on Windows OEM license agreements in your country. Another example - as my country allows me to take backup copies of software and allows me to make limited copies of films/music for personal use, some restrictions the studios or software makers in the USA do impose on films/musics on that specific point do _not_ apply for me in my country!

Some sort of code analyzing may be prohibited by the license and/or law. Disassembly and re engineering is sometimes explicitly forbidden with some software. But I don't know if such activities were necessary for this kernel patch. I don't even know the appropriate kernel license on this point. Who knows that point of the license? And isn't there another point in the agreement which allows to patch some piece of code to circumvent bugs/drawbacks?

Another point when using this kernel will be, how much do you trust a program/patch which alters such a vital piece of your system? Is there a clear documentation what will be changed when you run the patch? And as warpcafe pointed out, does these changes have a negative impact on your other programs and how much testing was made at which quality level? And will be official support for your system if you use this kernel? This has to be answered by everyone by them self.

Of course Mensys will never sell a patched kernel until IBM allows it to do (which is not likely cause why should IBM invest only 5 minutes into this?). They simply can not sell something if there's the slightest possibility that IBM dislikes it if the do not want not lose the contract with them. I said 'dislike', beside all legal/illegal issues. But this is not a valid argument for the 'normal' user who do not need to take care off IBM in this respect as IBM do not take care about the 'normal' users since more than 10 years now.   

This is not to mislead someone to do something illegal. But I think the legal/illegal state of using a patched kernel is by far not as clear as the above statement may sound.

Fahrvenugen

Quote from: RobertM on 2010.03.06, 07:16:03

I have a question... (because I have no clue), but what if after the kernel they are working on is complete, they did a diff, and then created a script/program that simply modified the user's existing, legal kernel?

Hi,

That's a good question.  I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand in normal circumstances I believe you should be okay patching your own kernel.  However given the history of this project and how things have been released, there are still questions in my mind.

Normally with copywrite law (and again, I'm not a lawyer so this is just what I've come to understand):

1.  If you install / use something you know is in violation (for example, if you downloaded an ISO of OS/2 that you don't have a license for) then you are the one who is at fault.

2.  If you use software that as far as you know is in compliance and you have a valid license for, but then it is later found to have code that has not been legitimately used, then it is the software provider that is at fault (a good example of this is when Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.0 with compression technology owned and develoeped by Stacker, and Microsoft did not have the license to include it in MS-DOS, but did so anyways). 

In this situation with the kernel patch things are a little less clear.  Distributing a patched kernel that IBM has not licensed for patched distribution is clearly illegal.  Distributing a patch file that you then apply to your own (licensed) kernel normally I'd guess should be okay, however given the history and limited information on this project, questions still arise in my mind of:

1.  Who owns the code contained in the patch?  Was it fully developed by the folks distributing it (in which case, they are free to do whatever they wish with their own code), or is there also code in it that they didn't develop themselves (in which case, they'd be bound by whatever license came with that code)?

2.  If there is code in the "patch" that was not developed by the people distributing the patch, presuming the people who developed this patch have a license to distribute code which mighht not be theirs, what license is it released under?  Does it allow for use in commercial settings?  Does it allow for use in  non-commercial/home settings?  Does it allow for further modification and redistribution, or is it a "take it and don't mess with it" type of situation?

Again, I have no clue if this is even an issue - it could very well  be that everything in the patch has been developed by the people distributing the patch itself, in which case there shouldn't be any issues that I know of.  And normally I wouldn't even ask these questions (the questions have never occurred to me when using a patch such as Patchldr from Daniela Engert for allowing memory recognition above 64 MB.  I have no doubt that she wrote the code for Patchldr).  However it all seems to be a somewhat grey area right now.

Don't get me wrong though - I would love to see further improvements in the kernel, I love to see bugs fixed and the feature set expanded.  However the current practice that just seems to be along the lines of "here's a file, try it out" without any real information on who developed the code and what license it is being released under (other then saying it is "free"), it has led me to ask some of these questions.

Also please note that I'm not trying to advise people one way or another on whether to try out this kernel or not.  That's entirely up to you if you want to do that, not for me to say.




RobertM

Quote from: Fahrvenugen on 2010.03.08, 19:24:48
Also please note that I'm not trying to advise people one way or another on whether to try out this kernel or not.  That's entirely up to you if you want to do that, not for me to say.

I cannot, unless enough information clearly establishes the legality of either a patcher or released kernel. Personally, I wouldnt... and most definitely on behalf of my customers, I cannot (I do work for and provide licenses for various county organizations).

Hoping some sort of legal solution to this comes up - otherwise it simply is not an option for me either professionally or personally.


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