Sad Tale of Greed and Aspiration.

On Aug 27, 4:41*am, Michael Jaworski
wrote:

I think those that are using LK8000 need to take a step back and ask
themselves whether what they are doing is really acceptable.

Michael -

As an IT professional I understand your stance on this. Were XCSoar a
commercial product or the results of a dedicated team that was still
working on it, I would have some of those same feelings. However:

1) Both products are free. No one is losing money or being driven out
of business.
2) Most of the team that originally put together XCSoar is, as I
undertand it, no longer involved in the product. The 1 or 2 new
people that have taken control of XCSoar did not actually develop it
AFAIK. If the original developers want to be upset then I can
understand - but that's not the same thing as the current developer
being upset. AND I would point out to the original developers that
their hard work is still completely available as XCSoar or the XCSoar
source. Also: remember that the LK8000 developer WAS one of the
XCSoar authors/contributors - not a black knight who swooped in from
nowhere and "stole" the code.
3) LK8000 is not going to be a commercial product. Heck, XCSoar was
much closer to being a commercial product in the first place, via the
Triadis flight computer. Given what's already freely available, I
don't see a commercially-viable path for LK8000 in any case.

Look, we can talk in abstracts and ideals; but there's a need to be
pragmatic and realistic about the situation. We're dealing with
personalities and egos that created this mess; and both sides have
chosen to try to exclude the other party, while still making the
results of their work available to the public for free (the LK8000
developer refuses to even accept donations to cover website costs).

Is there a violation of the GPL going on? Possibly. Is the "spirit"
of the GPL being violated? Yes. But is it materially harming
anyone? That's a much tougher question to answer... If I knew it
*was* harming someone, I wouldn't use it; but I don't see how its
causing harm at this point. I'm not happy about the situation, but I
don't see a "perfect" solution at this point. The LK8000 developer
has claimed that the source-code will be made available at a future
date when the software is publicly distributed. Personally I believe
that the best thing for me to do is to apply gentle pressure and
persuasion, to try to encourage this to come true sooner rather than
later.

The practical reality is this: We don't have to like it; but asking
people to stop using a superior product is just not going to happen -
not when its free and already "in the wild".

--Noel

On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:43:05 -0700, noel.wade wrote:

Is there a violation of the GPL going on? Possibly. Is the "spirit" of
the GPL being violated? Yes. But is it materially harming anyone?
That's a much tougher question to answer... If I knew it *was* harming
someone, I wouldn't use it; but I don't see how its causing harm at this
point. I'm not happy about the situation, but I don't see a "perfect"
solution at this point. The LK8000 developer has claimed that the
source-code will be made available at a future date when the software is
publicly distributed. Personally I believe that the best thing for me
to do is to apply gentle pressure and persuasion, to try to encourage
this to come true sooner rather than later.

So let me help apply some gentle pressure...

rant

There is a HUGE violation of the GPL going on here.

1000's of hours were spent writing the original XCSOAR code. The
developers who did it, as well as all of those who helped with testing,
filing bugs, translating, documentation etc did it for no reward at all.

The only rights they have reserved over their work, is that the source
code of any software developed from their work should be made available
to them and to anybody else who feels motivated to continue with the
work. This is the same motivation that has resulted in entire operating
systems and many thousands of applications being written under GPL
copyrights.

It is exactly this right which is being withheld. It is not only a theft
of the intellectual property of the original XCSOAR authors, but it is
also an insult to 10's of thousands of programmers and developers who
have contributed to GPL copyrighted work over the decades.

The rules are simple. You cannot distribute a "testing beta" derivative
of a GPL copyright work unless you distribute the source code of that
work as well. At the same time, not at some date in the future.

The practical reality is this: We don't have to like it; but asking
people to stop using a superior product is just not going to happen -
not when its free and already "in the wild".

If this is your attitude, then you might as well distribute hacked copies
of Winpilot, CU Mobile, and Pocket Strepla, underhand to other readers of
this newsgroup.

But this is worse. Perhaps the gliding equivalent of a programmer who
violates a GPL copyright is a pilot who falsifies their documentation in
order to earn a badge that they never flew. It does not hurt anybody, so
what is the harm in that?

/rant

Ian

PS: Just publish the code and all will be forgiven!

At 16:43 27 August 2010, noel.wade wrote:

Hi Noel,

I'm involved in the XCSoar project in a very minor way since 2005 (I
usually say 'did the logo with the swift in it', but I also sneaked in a
number of bugs [that way the swift doesn't go hungry.]) I can't speak for
the main contributors to XCSoar, but I'd like to add a different
perspective:

As an IT professional I understand your stance on this. Were XCSoar a
commercial product or the results of a dedicated team that was still
working on it, I would have some of those same feelings. However:


2) Most of the team that originally put together XCSoar is, as I
undertand it, no longer involved in the product. The 1 or 2 new
people that have taken control of XCSoar did not actually develop it
AFAIK. If the original developers want to be upset then I can
understand - but that's not the same thing as the current developer
being upset.

There's a third party site that automatically generates a list of
contributors to the XCSoar project that is useful here, I'll link to it
with the following caveats: It's not up-to-date and gives the wrong
impression about the amount of effort each contributor has made - please
ignore the Y-axis scaling and 'ranking', it's not a measure of lines of
code written or indeed time expended but of something altogether
arbitrary.

http://www.ohloh.net/p/xcsoar/contributors?page=1
(Again, it's people that could be said to have essentially left the
project that we're looking for, the 'ranking'/Y-axis is nowhere near an
accurate measure of the amount of effort contributed and should be
ignored)

Note that while the activity of some members is sporiadic, there are few
who look inactive. And the few who do look inactive include me, and I'm
not. The big contributors to the project in its early state are still
with the project, and have been clear from the outset that they want Paul
(Paul Coolwind/Paolo Ventafridda is the LK8000 developer - I'm not sure
which he prefers, but I'll refer to him as Paul since he goes by Coolwind
on the LK8000 forums) to release the source code.

Also: remember that the LK8000 developer WAS one of the
XCSoar authors/contributors - not a black knight who swooped in from
nowhere and "stole" the code.

I'm not sure if the list linked above gives an accurate timestamp of
Paul's involvement, and I have no idea when Paul started developing for
XCSoar, but the following post from Paul as a user at the end of November
2008 presumably predates any development work :

http://tinyurl.com/389dz4f
(Links to Google's 'Nabble' mailing-list archive of the xcsoar-user
sourceforge group)

And LK8000 as an isolated project dates from August / September 2009 if
I'm not mistaken.

3) LK8000 is not going to be a commercial product. Heck, XCSoar was
much closer to being a commercial product in the first place, via the
Triadis flight computer. Given what's already freely available, I
don't see a commercially-viable path for LK8000 in any case.

The Triadis Altair spurred a lot of the development of XCSoar, and the
improvements filtered back into the Pocket PC version. Done right,
commercial use is beneficial to open source projects and not discouraged.

Look, we can talk in abstracts and ideals; but there's a need to be
pragmatic and realistic about the situation. We're dealing with
personalities and egos that created this mess; and both sides have
chosen to try to exclude the other party, while still making the
results of their work available to the public for free (the LK8000
developer refuses to even accept donations to cover website costs).

There's no way that XCSoar can exclude any party that agrees to comply
with the GPL, so no exclusion has occurred from that end.

XCSoar developers do however send emails whenever some tester's
absent-mindedly uploaded the LK8000 project on a public file-server. (not
legal threats, just details of the GPL infringement and a polite request
that they remove it. They always do, which should be an indicator of
something.)


Is there a violation of the GPL going on? Possibly. Is the "spirit"
of the GPL being violated? Yes. But is it materially harming
anyone? That's a much tougher question to answer... If I knew it
*was* harming someone, I wouldn't use it; but I don't see how its
causing harm at this point.

Devil's advocate he By that logic can you suggest any realistic event
that would trigger a moral objection other than Paul charging for LK8000?

I'm not happy about the situation, but I
don't see a "perfect" solution at this point.

As far as the GPL goes, the possible solutions appear to be:
1) Paul contacts each of the ~20 XCSoar contributors and asks for their
permission to use their work without the GPL licence, and removes the work
of those who don't agree from LK8000.
2) Paul releases the source code.
3) Paul stops all distribution of LK8000 (until 2 is satisfied).

I think everyone in the XCSoar project's pushing for 2. I know paraglider
pilots especially find the features of LK8000 very useful.

The LK8000 developer
has claimed that the source-code will be made available at a future
date when the software is publicly distributed.

Crucially the terms 'alpha, beta' etc have no meaning as far as the GPL
goes - if Paul's publically distributing the program he has to distribute
the source code too. And the program is being publically distributed by the
group Paul has assigned as testers. I'll labour that point a little;
Paul's making no attempt to stop this hand-me-down form of distribution,
even happily mentions this subterfuge on the first pages of the LK8000
manual.

Is this form of distribution violating the GPL? Yes, but in a way that
spreads the responsibility over each link of the chain of distribution.
Lawsuits are an unlikely resolution; perhaps if distributors were a little
less apathetic.

Personally I believe
that the best thing for me to do is to apply gentle pressure and
persuasion, to try to encourage this to come true sooner rather than
later.


Here's a few arguments for doing so, or perhaps taking a firmer stance on
the issue;

Lines of code is a poor way of measuring effort expended, but XCSoar
contained around 220,000 lines of code in the last quarter of 2008 (around
the time Paul joined the project). Paul was justifiably proud of claiming
in May this year that the extra features of LK8000 made up an extra 20,000
lines of code.

On a practical level, the ramifications of LK8000's closed source status
are fairly simple - for the last year both projects have continued in
different directions, both involving very different major changes to the
code. The two projects have been entirely isolated during that period, so
bugs have been fixed independently (and inevitably in different ways) in
each project, and as features and changes are built upon these divergent
sets of code it becomes more and more difficult to exchange features or
fixes between the two projects. This isn't particularly significant to
users at the moment, but the current industry trends suggest the vast
majority of electronic ink / 'pixel qi' sunlight-readable devices will
use Android / Linux.

Packaging source code takes minutes and costs nothing - there's an ocean
of websites out there dedicated to hosting source code.

Regards,

Simon

Simon -

With the many lengthy posts here I'll make this one somewhat brief
(although I have opinions on a lot of what's been said)...

1) THANK YOU for your contributions to XCSoar! I used it from 2007 -
2009 and appreciate the work that you and many others did to create
such a wonderful free product. I even created a video (on YouTube and
Twango) to show off the main features of XCSoar. I also recognize
that without XCSoar there would be no LK8000, and I hope that my use
of LK8000 is not taken as an insult to the work done by contributors
like yourself!

2) Paolo has publicly claimed that his submissions to XCSoar (for
PNAs, as Martin mentions) were rejected. Since someone at the head of
XCSoar development is apparently refusing to accept his code, I see
his refusal to release the source-code for LK8000 as a "tit-for-tat"
response. Hence my comments about exclusion and egos - the GPL has
nothing to do with it. I find this spat annoying and distasteful; but
I also don't think its my place to insert myself between the warring
personalities.

3) Paolo apparently started contributing to XCSoar around 5.2 or
5.22... So he was a late-comer to the party; but he was involved for
a time.

4) My comments about business and harm stem from my personal view on
software development: In my mind there is a clear division between a
commercial or professional project, and a "for-free" or "for-the-
public-good" project. If you code something and say "I'm giving it
away to the masses", then you have to accept the fact that you can't
always control the public. Its understandable to be hurt if someone
uses something you've done and doesn't give you credit for the work.
But if someone gets all knotted up about it, then perhaps their
original motives weren't as pure or altruistic as they thought? Now
if the development was started with the intention of making a profit
or obtaining something else (like a job or an award) through this
project, then mis-use of the code is true theft. The GPL occupies
this weird middle-ground, where people are giving away stuff "for
free", but they don't want someone else to make a profit off of their
efforts; and/or they want to have some sort of hammer to wield in
order to force others to give away *their* code/contributions as
well. As a way of forcing projects into the light to be evolved
through group effort, its cool - but its got its drawbacks as well.

OK, this is getting too lengthy, I'll cut it off here. Just to be
clear: I still think the GPL should be respected and on a personal
level I don't agree with Paolo's course of action. But I do
understand why he's doing it, and there's no arguing that LK8000 is
presently superior to XCSoar 5.2.4 - especially on PNAs and other
newer Win CE/Mobile devices; and that's driving its adoption. As a
private citizen with no control over either project, I hope for a
positive resolution and full respect of the GPL and other laws by both
parties.

BTW - You mentioned Android. Which is cool, but I think a lot of
projects developed for Android may wind up in legal limbo as the
ORACLE lawsuit winds its way through the courts over the next several
years. The legal issues with LK8000 may wind up being peanuts
compared to an XCSoar product on Android! :-P

--Noel

On Aug 27, 4:41*am, Michael Jaworski
wrote:
So basically the message being promulgated here is that it is ok for the
LK8000 team to take someone else's copyrighted work (which is distributed
under a licence with strict terms stating how it can be used/distributed),
create a derivative work and shirk on his contractual obligations with the
original author? *

And that we should all help and support the LK8000 author in undermining
this agreement by keeping the distribution channel 'underground' so that
this distribution cannot be so easily proved by the original (XCSoar)
author, thereby leaving him with no redress?

I think those that are using LK8000 need to take a step back and ask
themselves whether what they are doing is really acceptable.


OPEN SOURCE..=...SOURCE CODE is freely available to modify and mess
with any way you want, just don't sell the
resulting product.

Purpose: So that people can modify and redistribute their own version
of the code as long as they are not profiting.

Result: The source have been copied, modified and is not being
sold.....so what is the problem?

Granted I don't think the source is available yet, but the developer
does not feel its ready yet....needs commenting, documentation etc
so in due course LK8000 should be fully in compliance with the
license. Lets give these amateur developers some slack
as they can not be expected to run like a corporation when 1 person is
doing the majority of the work.

Now if it does go Commercial then they will have the crap sued out of
them, and they know it, so lets not
worry about that. Highly unlikely to go commercial because their
market is too small for it to be worthwhile and pulling a move like
that
will ensure that they have NO customers as I believe the glider folks
will black ball them and not support the commercial
product.

Open Source promotes development of better and free software for the
benefit of all at no cost and I see that
happening exactly as envisioned with LK8000 branching off from XC
Soar.

No one looses, and everyone gains from this natural evolution of the
software.

No need to over complicate the very thing that Open Source was
designed to promote.

Ray

On Aug 27, 3:00*pm, jb92563 wrote:
On Aug 27, 4:41*am, Michael Jaworski

wrote:
So basically the message being promulgated here is that it is ok for the
LK8000 team to take someone else's copyrighted work (which is distributed
under a licence with strict terms stating how it can be used/distributed),
create a derivative work and shirk on his contractual obligations with the
original author? *

And that we should all help and support the LK8000 author in undermining
this agreement by keeping the distribution channel 'underground' so that
this distribution cannot be so easily proved by the original (XCSoar)
author, thereby leaving him with no redress?

I think those that are using LK8000 need to take a step back and ask
themselves whether what they are doing is really acceptable.

OPEN SOURCE..=...SOURCE CODE is freely available to modify and mess
with any way you want, just don't sell the
resulting product.

Purpose: So that people can modify and redistribute their own version
of the code as long as they are not profiting.

Result: The source have been copied, modified and is not being
sold.....so what is the problem?

Granted I don't think the source is available yet, but the developer
does not feel its ready yet....needs commenting, documentation etc
so in due course LK8000 should be fully in compliance with the
license. Lets give these amateur developers some slack
as they can not be expected to run like a corporation when 1 person is
doing the majority of the work.

Now if it does go Commercial then they will have the crap sued out of
them, and they know it, so lets not
worry about that. *Highly unlikely to go commercial because their
market is too small for it to be worthwhile and pulling a move like
that
will ensure that they have NO customers as I believe the glider folks
will black ball them and not support the commercial
product.

Open Source promotes development of better and free software for the
benefit of all at no cost and I see that
happening exactly as envisioned with LK8000 branching off from XC
Soar.

No one looses, and everyone gains from this natural evolution of the
software.

No need to over complicate the very thing that Open Source was
designed to promote.

Ray

But, you, I or the LK8000 developers don't get to choose. The source
code copyright belongs to others and is licensed under the GPL. And
more than just a legal point, those folks are clearly upset about
this. So the developers of LK8000 should just man up and publish the
code -- and the issue will just go away.

While open source can deliver a lot of benefits, complaining about
this behavior is not attacking open source. Quite the opposite, a lot
of open source developers would see this exact behavior as a threat to
the development freedom and community spirit around open source
development.


Darryl

On Aug 28, 10:00*am, jb92563 wrote:
OPEN SOURCE..=...SOURCE CODE is freely available to modify and mess
with any way you want, just don't sell the
resulting product.

No, no, no.

"Open Source" is not one particular thing. There are many different
open source licenses, ranging from declaring your work to be "in the
public domain", to the BSD&MIT "you can do anything you like except
pretend you wrote it all", to the GPL and others.

There is nothing at all in the GPL that prevents you from selling the
product resulting from your modifications. Or even without
modifications -- just take the existing source code, package it up,
and sell it.

The *only* restriction is that you must provide the source code for
the entire product if it contains any GPL code at all.

If you don't like this restriction then don't use someone else's GPL
code. Simple.

Why would someone pay you money if they could just download the source
code and compile it themselves? The same reason that McDonalds
survives even though you can buy ingredients and make a better burger
at home yourself. Convenience and/or lack of skill. Perhaps also
technical support, in the case of software.


Purpose: So that people can modify and redistribute their own version
of the code as long as they are not profiting.

Profit has nothing to do with it. To quote RIchard Stallman, GPL is
free as in speech, not free as in beer.


Result: The source have been copied, modified and is not being
sold.....so what is the problem?

The problem is that the terms under which the original authors made
their work available are not being followed. They only asked for one
thing in exchange for the right to use their copyrighted work. That
one thing is not being done, therefore the LK8000 people have no right
to use their work.


Granted I don't think the source is available yet, but the developer
does not feel its ready yet....needs commenting, documentation etc
so in due course LK8000 should be fully in compliance with the
license. Lets give these amateur developers some slack
as they can not be expected to run like a corporation when 1 person is
doing the majority of the work.

It doesn't take any effort. They only have to make their CVS/SVN/git/
mercurial server on the internet. They probably do this anyway, for
their own convenience.


Now if it does go Commercial then they will have the crap sued out of
them, and they know it

No, there is no problem in them going commercial, as long as they
provide the source code.

I'd like to point out something here..

"Bruce Hoult" wrote On Aug 28, 10:00 am,
The problem is that the terms under which the original authors made
their work available are not being followed. They only asked for one
thing in exchange for the right to use their copyrighted work. That
one thing is not being done, therefore the LK8000 people have no right
to use their work.

False. Owning and using a GPLd software has nothing to do with distribution.
GPL is about distribution. This thread started because a guy could not find
a distributed
copy of LK8000 on my web page, nor a download link.

Granted I don't think the source is available yet, but the developer
does not feel its ready yet....needs commenting, documentation etc
so in due course LK8000 should be fully in compliance with the
license. Lets give these amateur developers some slack
as they can not be expected to run like a corporation when 1 person is
doing the majority of the work.
It doesn't take any effort. They only have to make their CVS/SVN/git/
mercurial server on the internet. They probably do this anyway, for
their own convenience.

False again. It does take a lot of efforts, and months. It took almost an
year to 4 people so far.
I am doing it alone. I don't use cvs git etc. being alone, and this is
saving me time which I can dedicate to
development. In order to be useful to somebody, with a decent learning curve
to allow developers to contribute,
source code must be cleaned up and explained. And a development environment
has to be made too, and distributed as well.
Otherwise, I don't believe it will be good to anything else but for allowing
companies to sell PNAs running LK8000.
For sure, no contributions to the software itself.

When you say "it does not take any effort" you are for sure talking about
yourself, not me.
It never takes any effort, if you are not going to do it personally!

Now if it does go Commercial then they will have the crap sued out of
them, and they know it
No, there is no problem in them going commercial, as long as they
provide the source code.

Right. I could sell a PNAs at the price of 5000$. That would give the right
of asking for the source code ONLY to legal buyers.
Triadis did that, and the source code was released only after over 1 year.
Sadly, I myself in the meantime had rewritten most of what they had done in
the past, and byebye GPL spirit. And that's commercial GPL.

FYI
- 5.2.4 is out with no PNA binaries. My contribution to PNA version of 5.2.4
was clearly refused and no official release of 5.2.4 was ever made because
of that. I had worked for months on it. Now it is distributed unofficially,
not by me (It doesn't take any effort to create a PNA version, if you only
need to run a "makefile", and get the credits).
- I was told not to bother to send anything concerning lk8000 interface, by
the lead developer of xcs.
- The upcoming 6.0 is 100% different from 5.2.4 and thus from LK8000. No
code sharing possible.
- LK is free, and I refused to accept a single cent in donations. Not a
single cent. So nobody can say I made money of of it.
On the contrary, I remind I told someone to use the donate button on
xcsoar time ago.


paul

Triadis is not selling a "PNA" of course, but a wonderful hardware with
sensors etc.
I did not meant "did that" as selling a PNA.

"PCool" ha scritto nel messaggio
...
Triadis did that, and the source code was released only after over 1 year.

On Aug 28, 1:28*pm, "PCool" wrote:
I'd like to point out something here..
[snip]
paul

Paul

Can you clarify what license are you distributing LK8000 binaries
under? And if it is the GPL what version of the GPL? You provided that
software to at least some original people, and they seem to be
redistributing it. So what license was it provided to those original
people under? Is source code available for download now or via other
ways to users of the software? If not can you explain how you are not
violating the GPL and the copyright rights of other XCSoar developers?

I'm not asking how hard something is, or criticizing your software
engineering or project goals, etc., which all seem pretty impressive.

What any XCSoar developer tells you about whether they like, dislike,
will or will not incorporate your code in the XCSoar project has no
relevance on the obligation you have under the GPL to make source code
publicly available (or at least available to all binary recipients).
The only thing that can release you from this requirement is a
separate non-GPL license grant from all copyright holders of their
code you incorporate in your software.

If you still have questions on the GPL and are unsure about your
compliance requirements I will be happy to discuss this offline with
you.

Thanks


Darryl Ramm