On "Profiteering" and Free Software

VK3KYY
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by VK3KYY » Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:25 pm

ve7mdt wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:04 pm
To the OP on this thread, I don't think Roger was saying that he was going to rescind the code that was released under GPL (which you implied). What he was saying was that he and other developers might stop working on future releases for free. There is a big difference here. You can still download the ones already released and use it for free, under GPL. I think you have misunderstood what Roger was saying.
Yes.

I was not suggesting that existing versions would or could be removed.


BTW.
There is a general problem with the GPL license that was originally applied to the code by Kai, after Kai and I looked at the license on similar projects.


It is not actually possible to apply the GPL to the SGL binary file, because it contains proprietary sections for the AMBE codec (around half the total firmware size), which are from the original Radioddity firmware.
i.e We can't supply source for that part of the SGL because we don't have it, and anything to do with AMBE is a license problem.


Also.
Because of the additional clause(s) to the license only non-commercial use. This also renders the entire GPL license invalid.

Unfortunately this mistake with the license was made a long long time ago, because we copied the license from MMDMVHost. Only to find out later than Jonathan G4KLX got the license wrong for MMDVMHost :-(

But at this stage its now difficult to change it, even though the license is actually totally useless.

KC7RBW
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by KC7RBW » Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:54 pm

ve7mdt wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:04 pm
To the OP on this thread, I don't think Roger was saying that he was going to rescind the code that was released under GPL (which you implied).
I didn't mean to imply that. Read on for a somewhat clearer ideas.
VK3KYY wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:25 pm
I was not suggesting that existing versions would or could be removed.
I could tell that you were careful not to suggest that. As long as you also don't share newer builds of the firmware with the rest of us the license allows you to keep your modifications to yourself.

I hope it never comes to that. The most likely result would be that another fork would begin, but without the developers who have put so much work into it and are so intimately familiar with the code. The future of the project would look grim for a while while a new community got going.

There are lots of examples of forks exceeding their parents. XFree86 and Xorg; StarOffice, OpenOffice, and LibreOffice; MySQL and MariaDB; Pspectra and GNU Radio. The pattern is consistently that the more open community ultimately has the dominant fork. This is exactly what the founders of Free Software movement had in mind and it's worked well so far.

To be very clear: I hope this never happens to OpenGD77!
VK3KYY wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:25 pm
It is not actually possible to apply the GPL to the SGL binary file, because it contains proprietary sections for the AMBE codec (around half the total firmware size), which are from the original Radioddity firmware.
i.e We can't supply source for that part of the SGL because we don't have it, and anything to do with AMBE is a license problem.
If you want a GPL-compatible binary, you could zero out that region and have the firmware uploader do the combining. It's still a bit sketchy, but the .sgl file itself, as it's distributed, would not include the AMBE codecs. If it's hard to do that with the linker, we could drop in a fake codec that outputs silence.

I'd love to see Codec 2 dropped in as a replacement, but obviously that would make it only compatible with other radios using the same codec.
VK3KYY wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:25 pm
Because of the additional clause(s) to the license only non-commercial use. This also renders the entire GPL license invalid.
Since the non-commercial clause is a note in the README.md and the GPL-2.0 LICENCE file is a legal document written by lawyers and widely understood to not exclude commercial use (as long as conditions are met), would you suppose instead that the GPL license renders the non-commercial note invalid?

VK3KYY
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by VK3KYY » Sat Nov 21, 2020 11:11 pm

IMNAL, but generally the "Readme.MD" is the main page of a github repo, akin to the index page on a website.
Its completely normal on Github to put copyright and license information in this file.

However, it was a mistake not to realise that this would be a problem by putting an additional clause , into the Readme.md file, and following the lead of MMDVMHost, which specifically amends the license

https://github.com/g4klx/MMDVMHost

"This software is licenced under the GPL v2 and is intended for amateur and educational use only. Use of this software for commercial purposes is strictly forbidden."

It was always Kai's intention that this firmware should not be used commercially.


Unfortunately.
I now see that people started to use the firmware for their commercial operations, not just selling it as a chargeable upgrade.
So writing any form limitations is obviously pointless. :-(

ok1pt
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by ok1pt » Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:07 am

VK3KYY wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 11:11 pm
Unfortunately.
I now see that people started to use the firmware for their commercial operations, not just selling it as a chargeable upgrade.
So writing any form limitations is obviously pointless. :-(
What about creating a simple download page, which states in big red letters that this software is only for ham and other non-commercial use and where the downloading person will have to "sign" it by checking the checkbox, that he read it and understands it and will be following it. I understand that this is just a formality, but I saw it on a lot of similar projects and I believe that it's better than nothing...
With regards / 73,
Pavel

dl9sec
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by dl9sec » Mon Nov 23, 2020 9:03 am

ok1pt wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:07 am
I understand that this is just a formality, but I saw it on a lot of similar projects and I believe that it's better than nothing...
With regards / 73,
Pavel
Unfortunately: no it isn't just a formality and it can be done wrong in other projects too (see here). The license is a legal contract you have to follow if you accepted it.
So a seperate download page would help absolutely nothing.

So if one wants to use the sources commercially, he can do this if he follows the licensing terms too. That's the essence of the GPL...

But I would say it is possible with some feasible changes to get a at least a best possible license compliance and get rid of a copyright infringement (approach described above by KC7RBW).

@VK3KYY: I could prepare some measures what to do if you want...

73, Thorsten

F4MZI
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by F4MZI » Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:54 pm

Hi all,

I am not an expert with licences, but Creative commons seems to bring you what you expect :
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by ... /legalcode

73
Pierre-Philippe
F4MZI

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DU2XXR
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by DU2XXR » Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:05 pm

I was supposed this reply to this thread, but somehow it went somewhere else:

Last week, I helped a fellow ham program channels on his openDM1801 radio (plus updating the firmware) and TYT MD390. We spent around 4 hours, since programming talkgroups on the TYT was a big headache--and that's using text-based .conf editing on dmrconfig (but first using the very slow TYT CPS GUI and then doing copy-paste afterward).

He bought me and my kids a bucket of fried chicken for dinner. We're both happy.

VK3KYY
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by VK3KYY » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:42 pm

4I1RAC wrote:
Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:05 pm
I was supposed this reply to this thread, but somehow it went somewhere else:

Last week, I helped a fellow ham program channels on his openDM1801 radio (plus updating the firmware) and TYT MD390. We spent around 4 hours, since programming talkgroups on the TYT was a big headache--and that's using text-based .conf editing on dmrconfig (but first using the very slow TYT CPS GUI and then doing copy-paste afterward).

He bought me and my kids a bucket of fried chicken for dinner. We're both happy.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.

What has helping someone with their codeplug and there MD390 to do with the companies who were charging far more than a price of a bucket of chicken, for the radio if people chose to have the brand new radio with the OpenGD77 firmware.
Or the people who seemed to be selling the firmware as a digital download, to people who didn't know it was free?

K4ED
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by K4ED » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:12 pm

One thing I have noticed since the overall announcement about profiteering, is that all the newer firmware versions are tagged as "pre-release."

Is this just coincidence, or some some part of the issues of "for profit" addressed by not tagging any further versions of the firmware as a "release?"

VK3KYY
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Re: On "Profiteering" and Free Software

Post by VK3KYY » Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:49 am

K4ED wrote:
Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:12 pm
One thing I have noticed since the overall announcement about profiteering, is that all the newer firmware versions are tagged as "pre-release."

Is this just coincidence, or some some part of the issues of "for profit" addressed by not tagging any further versions of the firmware as a "release?"
Not really.

Its every subsequent version, had known bugs as soon as I released it.

Even the current Beta has a few bugs which I found 2 days ago, one of which precludes it from ever being marked as stable.

I know the last "stable" version also had a load of bugs, but I was not keeping track so well back then.

There probably needs to be 3 different designations not Beta and Release, but Github only has Pre-Release or Release as options, and I'm never confident enough now to make something a Release version.

I guess sooner or later things may stabilise enough for it to become a Release.

But there are some more changes in the pipleline which are likely to make the next few releases less stable

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