Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Development => Topic started by: kolla on December 29, 2015, 04:23:40 PM
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So it appears that the sources for Amiga OS 3.1 have been leaked to the public, and an archive is circulating around on social media, torrents and file servers all over the place.
Potentially anyone can now have a look at them, make changes and build for their own pleasures, as well as use as inspiration to solve compatibility issues. What are the legal implications for developers of for example AROS?
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@kolla
wasn't this stuff leaked back in the late '90s anyway?
-- eliyahu
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@kolla
wasn't this stuff leaked back in the late '90s anyway?
-- eliyahu
Yes. It was leaked before.
The thing is there is no way anyone could use this legally. Even looking at the source would be the kiss of death for an AROS or MorphOS dev.
Personally I'd like to see the 3.1 source LEGALLY open sourced. I'd like an updated 68K branch targeted at legacy hardware without all of the modern bloat. Something I could run on my 500 or 4000 or even minimig. Doubt I will ever see that happen though.
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I think the scene is so far under ground at this point that it is not going to pose a real threat to anybody in the long run; I.E. no one is going to want to put much effort into writing competition to OS 4, MorphOS, or what ever. I could be wrong, but that's my theory.
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About the only advantage would be recompiling with a better compiler and recreating the kickstart and workbench from that, and considering quite a bit is assembler there won't be much to gain. Maybe an '060 build...
But we already have specific libraries reimplemented better (Cosmos, etc) with Kickstart images updated. So again, the gains aren't going to be great.
Otherwise, it's zero use to AROS 68k devs, unless they want legal problems, and ditto elsewhere.
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Indeed recompiling for specific processors, optimizing code and fixing old bugs is certainly the value of this leak.
Now coders will finally have access to it, pushing the envelope a little further, which is good for old farts like me, that can apreciate the effort:)
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I cant see how any of it would matter at all. Most everything Amiga related has expired patents. What could any legal team even do at this point? 3.X is no longer being developed and whoever holds the rights should just make a public statement to have at it and improve on what you can. The community of developers that can even make use of this stuff is so small that it should be a no brainer to let them look and give back.
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I cant see how any of it would matter at all. Most everything Amiga related has expired patents. What could any legal team even do at this point? 3.X is no longer being developed and whoever holds the rights should just make a public statement to have at it and improve on what you can. The community of developers that can even make use of this stuff is so small that it should be a no brainer to let them look and give back.
Yeah; McEwen got his money-tap turned off ages ago, didn't he? When Petti Kouri died? I doubt he could mount much of an offense against anyone doing anything with OS3.1 at this point. That's even assuming he ever had paper rights to it anyway which I doubt.
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The only "implication" i could foresee from the code being "releaked" is some half-a$$ed knowledgeable miggy hacker knuckhead modifying the code in some nefarious, malicious or destructive manner and it getting into the wild for unsuspecting workbench thieves to download and install! Oh well, would serve them right! You are a devious one Trevor! :roflmao:
P.S. I don't mean to imply that Trevor is a knucklehead! :)
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Yeah; McEwen got his money-tap turned off ages ago, didn't he? When Petti Kouri died? I doubt he could mount much of an offense against anyone doing anything with OS3.1 at this point. That's even assuming he ever had paper rights to it anyway which I doubt.
As far as I understand, Cloanto own the 68k OS now not Amiga Inc. Perhaps Amiga Inc leaked it out of spite? Lol
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As far as I understand, Cloanto own the 68k OS now not Amiga Inc. Perhaps Amiga Inc leaked it out of spite? Lol
Ha! Did not know Cloanto held sole rights. Yeah that would be a funny turn of events, although I doubt they have anyone on their side who'd know what they were looking at if they weren't told directly what it was and provided extensive documentation...
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I cant see how any of it would matter at all. Most everything Amiga related has expired patents. What could any legal team even do at this point? 3.X is no longer being developed and whoever holds the rights should just make a public statement to have at it and improve on what you can. The community of developers that can even make use of this stuff is so small that it should be a no brainer to let them look and give back.
Copyright and patent law are not the same thing, but I don't know enough about either to explain the differences accurately, and I don't want to add to the confusion by trying. Perhaps someone else can take a stab at it.
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What it means is that the copyright owner Amiga Inc, or the sole license owner Cloanto can sue anyone who tries to use the code in a commercial venture or sue a website owner who provides access to the code or modified version of the code. It's a matter of civil not criminal law.
It muddies the water for AROS a bit in that if someone contributing to AROS views the code and then uses what s/he sees to enhance AROS, it could open AROS up to be sued by either Cloanto or Amiga Inc.
Copyright in Berne Convention countries last 50 years, this has been enhanced in the EU to 70 years and I believe in the US to 90 years...
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What it means is that the copyright owner Amiga Inc, or the sole license owner Cloanto can sue anyone who tries to use the code in a commercial venture or sue a website owner who provides access to the code or modified version of the code. It's a matter of civil not criminal law.
It muddies the water for AROS a bit in that if someone contributing to AROS views the code and then uses what s/he sees to enhance AROS, it could open AROS up to be sued by either Cloanto or Amiga Inc.
Copyright in Berne Convention countries last 50 years, this has been enhanced in the EU to 70 years and I believe in the US to 90 years...
I believe this might be a good place to repeat the claims made in February, 2015 for the sake of clarity:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2015-02-00027-EN.html
#6
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As far as I understand, Cloanto own the 68k OS now
It'd be so funny if they only had rights to the binary version of the OS and not the source.
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I cant see how any of it would matter at all. Most everything Amiga related has expired patents. What could any legal team even do at this point?
You don't understand the legal situation. "Patents" and "copyright" are two different things with different implications. A "patent" is a published idea, with the possibility to use the idea in third-party products (here, as in "software") by license granted by payment of money. A patent does not apply to a "code as such", but to the algorithm the code implements. Those have run out.
The "copyright" is the code "as is", the particular implementation of an "IP-right" as stated in a patent. And the copyright did run out. It usually extends 30 years after the death of its creator, or even 70 years now with the Mickey-Mouse law in place. You can certainly re-implement the same algorithms(!) AmigaOs is based on without violating the copyright. You could possibly violate a patent by that, but as you state correctly, those have run out. You should then be aware that the copyright holders (not IP-right holders!) may look very suspicious at you to ensure that no copyrighted code has been used.
No, you cannot, legally, do anything with these leaked sources. They cannot be exploited without permission of the owner of the copyright. You can at best re-implement *without* looking.
And no again, simly typing down the code from the stolen source does not make the resulting work legal, it would still be a derived work. If you want to be perfectly safe, "don't use, don't look, create all yourself".
The community of developers that can even make use of this stuff is so small that it should be a no brainer to let them look and give back.
Look, I would not even try looking for this stuff in torrents and so on. First of all, you do not know in which condition it is and whether it is any useful, i.e. reflects a compilable and stable state of the Os.
Second, it is not administrated and maintained. So even if you fix a bug, who tells that the fix can be passed along and is not lost, or confused because another person makes another "fix" or "improvement".
Third, if you really want to, there is of course an administrated AmigaOs on a specific version control system if you know where and how and whom to ask. However, as stated above, if you know, and if you look, you should be aware of the implications. If you use such code, it's copyrighted, and by publishing work based on this code, you are infringing rights of third parties which may get you into serious trouble. With knowledge comes responsibility.
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It'd be so funny if they only had rights to the binary version of the OS and not the source.
Actually, to my knowledge they indeed hold a license to the source code of 3.1 (one of the license holders, so to say). With 3.9, the situation is more complicated as the contributed code may have fallen back to their creators. That is, for example, the case for my contributions. Contracts were negotiated individually, so I cannot tell for others.
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A patent does not apply to a "code as such", but to the algorithm the code implements.
Well sort of. The only patent I remember related to software was the right mouse button drop down menu from the top of the screen (there are probably others). That isn't what I'd call an algorithm.
The "copyright" is the code "as is", the particular implementation of an "IP-right" as stated in a patent. And the copyright did run out. It usually extends 30 years after the death of its creator, or even 70 years now with the Mickey-Mouse law in place.
I don't believe death comes into it in this case. My understanding is that if If you write software and have it published then your death is important to the copyright expiring. If someone pays you to write software then when you die is irrelevant, because you never owned the copyright.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302
"In the case of an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first."
In the case of movies, they usually put at the end of the credits who the author was at the time the movie was created. I don't believe there is any doubt that most of the "AmigaOS" code was created as a work for hire. You'd need to pay an IP lawyer to figure out when the copyright expires on:
1. ARexx as it was licensed from IBM
2. The BCPL source used in 1.3 and earlier
3. Any arp code that turned up in 2.0 and later.
You can certainly re-implement the same algorithms(!) AmigaOs is based on without violating the copyright.
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And no again, simly typing down the code from the stolen source does not make the resulting work legal, it would still be a derived work.
Copyright only protects source code with artistic merit, so as long as the only similarities your source code contains are obvious then you are ok. The original used functions, variables, loops etc, so can you. If you just copy and paste or retype by hand and rename variables, functions, change spacing, tab indenting etc then you've violated the copyright.
If you want to be perfectly safe, "don't use, don't look, create all yourself".
It's better not to look at the original because your brain will see that implementation as the obvious one and you will struggle to figure out a better way and then be deluded into thinking it's ok to copy it.
You could follow Compaqs lead with how they re-implemented the IBM-PC BIOS http://mashable.com/2014/05/29/halt-and-catch-fire-amc-compaq/#Jue1WEcrdiqx
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This "news" should be spread outside our community, it will shed some light to the Amiga universe and might help getting a bit more users, devs or hackers who knows.
At least it could help developing better hacks on the Amiga.
Kamelito
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Well sort of. The only patent I remember related to software was the right mouse button drop down menu from the top of the screen (there are probably others). That isn't what I'd call an algorithm.
The patent isn't about right-mouse button menus but the fact that you can select *several* menu items at once (hold down RMB, click several menu items with LMB), which will be processed in the order you clicked them. It's patent no. 4,772,882 you can find search engines on uspto.gov.