08.13.13

Gemini version available ♊︎

Behind Samsung’s Latest Gross Violation of the GPL and Samsung’s Continued Support for Microsoft’s Patent Racket Against Linux

Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Kernel, Samsung at 11:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Quick Guide of license compatibility with GPL
Quick Guide of license compatibility with GPL

Summary: A call for advice on how to handle another Samsung violation of the GPL and betrayal of the community

As a quick reminder, over 6 years ago we called for a boycott of Samsung, which proved that it didn’t care about freedom and actively worked against it. In 2 posts [1, 2] from the past few weeks we covered yet another violation of the GPL by Samsung. This one required a leak to be shown and we spoke to the leaker, who prefers to remain anonymous. We consulted internally to see how this can be dealt with.

“Not enough data to do more than guess,” iophk wrote, “I do recall that the SFLC disapproved of the ‘robin hood’ approach to freeing code that had been ripped off.

“This one required a leak to be shown and we spoke to the leaker, who prefers to remain anonymous.”“I guess it depends on the provenance of the code. If it is ripped off from the kernel then it comes under GPLv2 or later (IIRC). Then it comes down to v2 or v3. I like what v3 accomplishes, but I do not. like mixing copyright with patents in the same license. Can v3 provide any protection if Microsoft starts to claim to have patents on *FAT?”

This is an interesting possibility that we are exploring. Samsung’s GPL violations are in an implementation of exFAT, a very common extortion tool against Linux distributors. “Here is the latest info from the most recent kernel,” writes iophk. “It is v2 only.”

It is v3 which deals with patent provisions. iophk continues: “Linus likes v2 very much but seems to have removed the “or later” clause that I vaguely recollect being there. Can rxrz [the leaker] say which version of the kernel exfat-nofuse came from? If it is a later one, then maybe v2 is the only option. If it is an earlier one, there might be a choice between v2 and v3.”

He later, upon further investigation, adds: “Here’s the oldest commit in Git, which has the same preamble. So I’m not sure under which circumstances v3 could be used. It is certainly a safe bet with v2.”

“We could like to relay the leaker’s question to the wider community.”We spoke with the leaker of this code, who wrote: “I just wanted to do a good thing.

“But now I have decided to put the LICENSE file there, containing GPLv2, since Samsung has stolen that code initially from the Linux kernel tree. (I believe it fits this code the best, v3 may be better though, I don’t know)”

We could like to relay the leaker’s question to the wider community. To quote her, the leaker: “Could you please help the project and make up a LICENSE file content for it? It happens that I’m not too good with legal things myself…”

I promised to work with our community at Techrights or anyone else who reads this to address this issue. Any suggestions of ways forward from here? Or licensing?

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

A Single Comment

  1. Michael said,

    August 13, 2013 at 1:12 pm

    Gravatar

    Samsung rips off open source and from Apple. They are wrong in both cases.

    You defend them in one case and attack them in the other. Why?

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023



  2. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning



  3. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source



  4. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day



  5. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day



  6. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  7. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  8. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  9. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  10. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  11. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  12. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  13. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  14. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  15. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  16. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  17. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  18. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  19. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  20. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  21. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  22. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023



  23. Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

    Links for the day



  24. Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

    Links for the day



  25. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Hidden Communities and Exam Prep is Not Education

    Links for the day



  26. Links 03/06/2023: IBM Betraying LibreOffice Some More (After Laying off LibreOffice Developers)

    Links for the day



  27. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Bubble Woes and Zond Updates

    Links for the day



  28. Links 03/06/2023: Apache NetBeans 18 and ArcaOS 5.0.8

    Links for the day



  29. IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 02, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, June 02, 2023



  30. The Developing World Abandons Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux at All-Time Highs on Desktops/Laptops

    Microsoft, with 80 billion dollars in longterm debt and endless layoffs, is losing the monopolies; the media doesn’t mention this, but some publicly-accessible data helps demonstrate that


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts