08.15.13

Gemini version available ♊︎

The Origins of the Leak of Samsung’s GPL Code Mishandling

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Patents, Samsung at 3:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Kenneth Crudup

Summary: More about Samsung’s Microsoft-serving code which seems like a gross violation of the GPL

Having been in contact with the source of the Samsung leak for a few days, we now have a lot more information that wasn’t published before. For the uninitiated, see the following three posts [1, 2, 3].

It turns out that the leaked code came from this man, who did not really mean to blow the whistle,

“Thank you very much for covering this story,” wrote the leaker. “It seems like GPL v2.2 is the way to go for this driver, correct?”

“ Kenneth R. Crudup is the one who leaked the driver. He got that driver through working for Broadcom on some android-ware.”
      –rxrz (pseudonym)We previously suggested a suitable licence for the leaked code, but we wanted to know who has the copyrights. The leaker explained: “I wish I had those logs, but I found the leak on github, and the original account has been deleted. Although I made a fork of that repo, here it is https://github.com/rxrz/kernel-N8000/tree/master/fs/exfat Kenneth R. Crudup is the one who leaked the driver. He got that driver through working for Broadcom on some android-ware. The driver in that repo is as original as it’s possible to get…

“In those files you can see the version log and the author names. I believe it was written by two people during their contract with Samsung.”

We have already identified and studied one of them. They are in Seoul.

We may still need some legal advice for handling this existing leaked code. The leaker is not sure who to ask. “If you get a minute,” she wrote, “could you please compose a license file for exfat-nofuse? I will merge it asap.”

“Maybe this is something that could be solved over at Groklaw,” said iophk from our team. “The twisty path that the code has taken to arrive where it is now makes it harder to guess who gets assigned the copyright. GPLv2 seems the right choice but who owns it?”

The probe continues… █

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