Bonum Certa Men Certa

Copyright Plagiarism of XScreenSaver by IBM/Red Hat Employee. A Code Thief Assigns IBM Software Patents.



Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer.

Copyright Plagiarism of XScreenSaver and IBM Red Hat Software Patents.



On Jamie Zawinski’s blog post about people taking his work, XScreenSaver, and putting security holes into it, he also commented that these forks have been plagiarized.



Just to add insult to injury, it has recently come to my attention that not only are Gnome-screensaver, Mate-screensaver and Cinnamon-screensaver buggy and insecure dumpster fires, but they are also in violation of my license and infringing my copyright.



XScreenSaver was released under the BSD license, one of the oldest and most permissive of the free software licenses. It turns out, the Gnome-screensaver authors copied large parts of XScreenSaver into their program, removed the BSD license and slapped a GPL license on my code instead — and also removed my name. Rude.



If they had asked me, “can you dual-license this code”, I might have said yes. If they had asked, “can we strip your name off and credit your work as (C) William Jon McCann instead”… probably not.



Mate-screensaver and Cinnamon-screensaver, being forks and descendants of Gnome-screensaver, have inherited this license violation and continue to perpetuate it. Every Linux distro is shipping this copyright- and license-infringing code.



I eagerly await hearing how they’re going to make this right.

-Jamie Zawinski


When I did a Web search for “William Jon McCann”, a blog that went inactive in 2013 showed he was, in fact, a GNOME developer at some point.



But another site shows that “William Jon McCann” is (or at least was) a Red Hat employee who took out tons of software patents and assigned them to Red Hat, which is now owned by IBM.



Software patents are one of the most horrible aspects of computing. They are typically used to attack competitors, and in many cases, the goal of getting the patent is to make it unclear what the invention allegedly is. In many cases, the patents are bogus, but you come after the victims with so many that they settle figuring that at least some of them will hurt if they go to court and lose.



The Free Software Foundation (1) doesn’t take a strong position on software patents anymore, and (2) has this incestuous relationship with Red Hat (and now IBM) to take code and money. Which may explain why they haven’t strongly come out in opposition to things like this.



It is interesting to know, however, that IBM Red Hat funded plagiarism of source code when they wanted it in GNOME, and that everything that forked GNOME since then is also committing plagiarism.



For what it’s worth, I don’t believe you need to have BSD-licensed code “dual licensed” to wrap it in the GPL. Proprietary software companies wrap it in proprietary licenses all the time and give people no source code at all.



"It is interesting to know, however, that IBM Red Hat funded plagiarism of source code when they wanted it in GNOME, and that everything that forked GNOME since then is also committing plagiarism."What is absolutely NOT alright is to strip the original author’s name and copyright header off the work and claim that someone else wrote the code.



This is, so unbelievably disgusting. Like, they could have used it without plagiarizing the work, but didn’t.



One wonders what other stolen code is lurking around in GNOME, copyright “William Jon McCann”, or others, and for the benefit of IBM Red Hat.



Also, is it really that hard to do screen locking that you have to copy and paste code you don’t understand, and if it is, then why do you want the same company designing Wayland?



"The decent thing would be to at least add his name back to the copyright headers"I don’t think any distribution shipping GNOME, MATE, or Cinnamon Desktops, have contacted JWZ and asked him what he wants to do about this, nor have the desktop projects themselves, nor has IBM.



IBM has managed to violate the freaking BSD license by doing basically the only thing it does not allow. Falsely attributing the work to someone else and then the others have followed along and not done anything to bring themselves out of violation.



The decent thing would be to at least add his name back to the copyright headers.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Last Article From Australia's Sam Varghese Was a Year Ago and It Covered the Release of Julian Assange, Who Will Apparently Come Back as 'Politician'
It'll soon be exactly 12 months
After Microsoft's Bankruptcy in Russia Android (Linux) Will Dominate Asia Completely
Windows probably peaked in "XP" or "2000"
India: Windows Falls to 50% in Desktops/Laptops and 8% Overall
laptops/desktops fell to 16% of the whole
statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 4.7% "Market Share" This Month
30,000 Microsoft jobs may be eliminated by year's end
Microsoft is in Trouble and Microsofters Know It
"I've been happy on Win 3.11 for years."
Links 02/06/2025: Political Leftovers, DRM, and Patents
Links for the day
 
The Leaks Were Right: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in May, Then Another Wave in June
Just as we've been saying for over a month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 02, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 02, 2025
Hungary Seems Hungry for Linux
Windows down by a lot
Like in Europe, Bad News for Microsoft in US and Canada
If it loses those "regions", then what's left?
About 8 Waves of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 (in Less Than 5 Months), Now Vista 11 "Market Share" Decreases
Really bad news for shareholders of Microsoft
statCounter Sees Bing "Share" Falling Over 0.5% in One Month, Now Lower Than Before the ChatGPT/Bing Chat Hype
Bing has been part of the mass layoffs for quite some time
Microsoft's Demise is a Global Phenomenon
mass layoffs justified using mindless buzzwords
All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux in EU and the UK, All-Time Lows for Microsoft
Combining ChromeOS and GNU/Linux, it adds up to and almost reaches 6%
[Video] New Introduction to Richard Stallman's Contributions Including GNU Emacs, GNU/Linux, and Software Freedom
from the channel previously bullied for supporting RMS
Links 02/06/2025: South Korea to Vote, Russia Blitzed From Within
Links for the day
Links 02/06/2025: Microsoft Spins Layoffs as "Slop", Frontier Settles Lawsuit
Links for the day
When You Publicly Boast About Wanting to Violently Attack People (Even Colleagues) Finding a Job Will Prove Difficult
there's a lesson to be learned here
The Web We Lost, the Information Lost Due to Microsoft's Attacks on Companies Like Yahoo! (Before the LLM Slop Frenzy)
When it comes to news sites, what can we say?
Covering Corruption in Poland, Including a War on Science (Due to Bad Politicians)
What we're about to show is that skilled and experienced scientists in Poland are besieged by bureaucrats
Gemini Links 02/06/2025: "Star Wars Day" and "Security Day"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 01, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 01, 2025
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part II: Lying to the IRS is a Big Issue
The OSI of today pretends to be something that it is not
Bloodlust and Love of Blades (Fascination With Murder) Nothing New Among Microsofters
Violence is not a joke and no group is magically entitled to make such "jokes"
Links 01/06/2025: Bird Flu, Food Price Inflation, and Growing US-China Hostilities
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: "Vibe Coding" Turns Out to be a Fraud and Amazon Merits Boycott, Argue Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: "Stardust" and Ideal PC Setup
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, "It's FOSS" Still Promoting Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: Simplification and Networks Everywhere
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 31, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 31, 2025