GPL RTG driver information available

[nicholas]

I am in contact with Tobias Abt to (finally) clarify the situation

Best of luck!

[guest11527]

Why are you extending your crusade now to UAE? It is really annoying...

I'm not on a "crusade for UAE". If I'm on a "crusade for anything", then its that:

Define Licensing properly if you run a project. Define clearly who can use what, and do not blindly hand out sources or APIs or anything without actually defining conditions probably.

If the Amiga history has shown one thing in the past then that this sloppyness has caused much grief. Both for the "professional" (ehem) management at Amiga, or Haage & Partner (Genesis, anyone? Probably a stolen project!) or CBM (ARexx, anyone? Probably a stolen project!)

Folks, if you want to avoid such mistakes made in the past now, do your job right. Don't just take sources blindly "yeah, yeah, all be fine...", but check, ask questions, and even more important, define for your work the conditions under which it can be used.  

BTW I have contacted Tobias Abt (I hope email is still valid) to clarify it or this discussion by hobby attorneys also not knowing the situation will go on forever... it is already boring

I doubt he'll answer...

[Heiroglyph]

mcmullan.. good move. thats at least more convenient in case of aros. openpci might deserve similar treatment. whats jasons involvement, anyway?

btw, the legality of this might still need to be confirmed, imho, before it meets any serious use.

Jason is not involved, just someone I have contact with. I gave him a courtesy call before using some of his nice clean driver code from the saga driver.

I'll reply more when I'm not on mobile.

[guest11527]

Did Tobias and Alexander get a licence from Frank Mariak when they implemented his CGX API in the product they sold and made money from?

A relevant question indeed. I do not know, but from what I know, Village Tronic went for P96 because they didn't want to pay for cybergraphics. Yes, it's kind of ironic.

Was it problematic for them? (Legally or "morally")

There is one important difference, though: What P96 re-implements is the documented, open CGfx API. Its native P96 counterpart is the rtg.library. This API is documented, both for P96 and for CGFx as it is supposed to be used by end-user (client) programs. You find .fd files, and autodocs and includes for all of cybergraphics.library, and all of rtg.library, and these interfaces are of course fine to be used.  

What we're talking here about is the closed source, private API between the rtg.library and the hardware drivers. CGfx also has an equivalent for that, and it is also closed source.

So you should probably ask Frank how he feels if you reverse engineer not the CGFx front-end (where there is nothing to be reverse-engineered because the API lies right in front of you in the form of Autodocs and fd files) but the closed source CGFx driver API.

So while I agree that there is certainly something icky about the P96 re-implementation of the cgfx front-end, the situation is not quite as symmetric as you believe.

[kolla]

You're using a closed API, an API that requires licensing.

No license is needed for guessing internal APIs, and I would not call them closed as it is becoming more and more "common knowledge" how the APIs work. You cannot force people to unlearn what they have discovered.

The P96 business model is whack, even Apple has not managed to prevent internal APIs from "leaking" (f.lux, total finder etc).

[guest11527]

No license is needed for guessing internal APIs,

Oh yes, as soon as you hand them out (e.g. as the P96 API to Brian King), you need to define a license. Because it's then no longer "closed".  

The P96 business model is whack.

Well, let's see what you would have suggested to get some money in return for the development of P96. Oh yes, I forgot. Let norwegian tax payers pay for it....

[Acill]

I think you all have sufficiently derailed the OPs thread now to the point of it being completely off topic.

Moderators: Can you pull out all the reply stuff from post #9 and put it in a new thread? Call it P96 License Fiascos or something.

[kolla]

Well, let's see what you would have suggested to get some money in return for the development of P96.

I have several times outlined ways for P96 to provide steady income - it's all about having _users_ pay according to ability and free will. Make it open source and even I am willing to pay. People are used to paying tiny monthly contributions for all kinds of things, why not P96. Funding for software development is a heck lot easier than selling APIs under freedom-limiting NDAs, even real world corporations know this by now.

Oh yes, I forgot. Let norwegian tax payers pay for it....

Yes, I have a real life job providing services that the public and society benefit greatly from, even foreigners visiting and studying here. Amiga is hobby, as it is for any sane person. Do you have a problem with that? Today we celebrate our constitution, a celebration that for some reason was illegal for 5 years last century. Who are you to mock my work and what Norwegians decide to use tax money on?

[Heiroglyph]

Say what you will, but Thomas has some very valid points. Those are the questions I'm hoping to get sorted out by doing what I'm doing. He's just not going along with the easy route and is taking a lot of flack for it.

There are multiple people doing exactly the same thing and calling it a driver, whether it is open or closed source and there have been for the last 15 years or so because the community clearly wants these drivers and has no other way to get them.

Like it or not, we're stuck with this ABI (it's not even an API, it's just an undocumented binary interface) at the moment.

Either I will be contacted or I won't. The worst case is that I'm not contacted at all and we carry on with the status quo.

If I am, why weren't all the others?

If I (or we) are contacted, why wait so long and condone its use in GPL'ed UAE by including it in the installer?

Why not accept registrations if you feel that your 20 year old software is still worth something? Care to update it?

I may not be in the right and I may change my mind based on Thomas' statements, those of another user or those of the developers, but these are important questions IMHO.

I just think someone needs to blow on this house of cards and see what happens.

[guest11527]

I have several times outlined ways for P96 to provide steady income - it's all about having _users_ pay according to ability and free will.

Given the tyical willingness to pay in Amiga Land, I can ensure you that this generated no self-sustaining income. Actually, I did ask.  

Amiga is hobby, as it is for any sane person. Do you have a problem with that?

No, the part I have problems with is that you call something "Whack" that is beyond your limited understanding. Open Source might be all nice and certainly justified - specifically if the work is paid for by the tax payer. But I see also reasons why people choose (did and still do) other models. Not everything that is beyond Open Source is "whack". People make choices for reasons. Probably for reasons you do not know, you probably cannot follow, or you do not or do not want to understand.

*That*, Kolla, is the problem I have with you. Closed-minded, unable to see beyond limits of your own experience.

[kolla]

Given the tyical willingness to pay in Amiga Land, I can ensure you that this generated no self-sustaining income.

People are willing to pay if the offer makes sense. Self-sustaining income? See "whack".

No, the part I have problems with is that you call something "Whack" that is beyond your limited understanding.

Let me present the business of selling RTG to Amiga for some of my investor friends and see what they think, I am pretty confident the word "whack" will be used. I mean seriously - RTG for an extremely marginal computer system, that has zero value outside of a small group of enthusiasts, and no value at all for retro nostalgics who mostly just want to play games on native chipset. If you think this concept of business has any validity, you are delusional.

Open Source might be all nice and certainly justified - specifically if the work is paid for by the tax payer. But I see also reasons why people choose (did and still do) other models. Not everything that is beyond Open Source is "whack".

And I did not say so, I said the P96 business model is whack, because it is mostly based on (false) assumptions about copyrights and intellectual property laws. There are plenty of cases when closed source is ok, for limited time and usecases, things have limited lifespan, systems that don't have users... once you offer code to the public, as part of an ecosystem, a "standard", something you know will be of general interest of plenty of users and developers (relatively), you damn well should pick an open source model for your product. Or be a huge software company that can guarantee a path forward.

People make choices for reasons. Probably for reasons you do not know, you probably cannot follow, or you do not or do not want to understand.

Yeah, people make idiotic choices all the time, nothing new about that, and I fully understand how it happens. What I fail to understand is how people insist on clinging to a failed and flawed idea for so long. I can only guess it is because admitting failure is too difficult, or because they somehow find satisfaction with the status quo and enjoy their position.

*That*, Kolla, is the problem I have with you. Closed-minded, unable to see beyond limits of your own experience.

I am glad you have problems with me, your views and understanding of how to successfully run an IT enterprise is stuck in the past, discussing with you is like diving into usenet groups from the mid 90ies. Call me narrow minded all you like, coming from someone with your views, that's almost a compliment.

[utri007]

We are all middle aged men, so we have money. I have bought software wich I don't have any intend to use ever. Just to support developers.

P96 owners should at least give us a change to support them.

Hopefully this thread woun't be fulled with....

[Lord Aga]

Just ignore Thomas, really. He is not a lawyer,

He is not ? Then why is he throwing around legal "dos and don'ts" all the time ?

That could get him a bunch of lawsuits on his back. :rtfm:

Tsk tsk tsk...

[Linde]

In fact, if you check the file, it says "(c) Brian King" in the header, and it does not have the usual GPL clause on top. So it's really questionable in which state this file is, and whether you are allowed to derive any third party work from it.

... and if you check the software it's included in and partially builds on (UAE and WinUAE) they are GPL licensed. You don't have to include license information in the source file for it to be enforceable, nor is GPL and copyright mutually exclusive. In fact, GPL builds on the foundations of copyright to be enforceable, and in most of the world it's impossible to even disown a work in terms copyright by other means than transferring the rights.

I agree with you that this project may belong in some sort of legal grey area, but that a file that was contributed to a GPL project has a copyright notice is not grounds for suspicion that it wasn't the intention of the contributor to release it under GPL terms. The license of the work is in the README file of the UAE repo.

Whether he was allowed to release it under those conditions in first place is a different question, of course, but at this point all the indications that the development of the Picasso 96 UAE code are in breach of some other contract are rumors and hearsay. It must be easier to get in touch with the proprietor of the official development kit and Brian King to resolve this, right?

Also, Hieroglyph,

If your code is indeed based on the GPL licensed (Win/)UAE source code, you can't simply re-license it under LGPL without express permission from its contributor(s). I don't know what you think is particularly impractical about the GPL for Amiga, anyway. All you need to do is make sure that the source of any application based on it is available to anyone with a copy of the software.

[wawrzon]

Given the tyical willingness to pay in Amiga Land, I can ensure you that this generated no self-sustaining income.

funny, bacause as far as i observe the willingness to pay is really high in "amiga" land, at least in comparison with the outside world. the problem i see is rather worded with "shut up and take my money!" as some put it. especially in some parts, where things have been and continue to be readily paid up front, but failed to deliver.

[Heiroglyph]

Please guys, refrain from personal insults, this has been a decent discussion I think.

So lets examine the one case I remember and if anyone has more info on the outcome, chime in.

Elbox created a driver by reverse engineering and/or a alleged pirated DDK.
P96 (I can't remember the company name) told them to pay up or stop.
Elbox said no.
??
You can still buy Elbox Mediators and software.

What became of that?

Here is a link to one of Elbox's public replies: http://anna.amigazeux.org/comments2.php?view=0974382064&category=news&start=101&103

And here is a reply from Tobias Abt of P96 (interestingly complete with a shout-out to Thomas): https://web.archive.org/web/20040704075635/http://www.vgr.com/mediator/pic96-press.txt