From: Adam Wozniak (adam_at_cuddlepuddle.org)
Date: 2002-03-28 18:58:21
Uz wrote: : You may want to read the article "10 Big Myths about : copyright explained" which is available as : : http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html Directly from that web site: % It should be noted that the author, as publisher of an electronic % newspaper on the net, makes his living by publishing copyrighted material % in electronic form and has the associated biases. Clearly, this man's opinion is biased. : > Let's forget for the moment that it's ludicrous to claim ownership over the : > idea of using a struct and a #define to access a memory mapped device. : : See Myth #6 in the article mentioned above. Not the letters of the alphabet : are protected, but the actual ideas expressed. It is your luck that I'm not the : one who had this idea originally (maybe I developed it myself, I don't : remember, but it has be in use for a long time before I used it the first : time). The Myth #6 in that article refers to 'stories' and 'fan fiction'. This is clearly neither. If you want examples of this sort of thing, pop open the linux kernel. I work with embedded systems for a living, we do this sort of thing all the time. The idea is hardly new or original. : > Let's forget for the moment that you had never seen a snip of 4 of the 6 files : > in the distribution before I released them. : : Your .cfg and .s files are based on other peoples code. Both of your .h files : are based on my email. The license.txt file is from the FSF. I haven't looked : at your .c file, maybe you're really the author. I don't know about the : Makefile either. By your logic, I cannot be the sole author of anything. I'm certain I've seen Makefiles and main.c files similar to the ones in that tarball. I know I didn't make up the idea of "void main(void)" on my own. Perhaps I should credit K&R. I think I should also credit my college professors for teaching me about interrupt vectors and ISRs. And the author of any makefile I've ever seen, because I'm sure I learned something from them. Oh yeah, and my mom too, I cannot forget her. : > Let's forget for the moment that I really did write most of the assembly in : > the .S file. : : Untrue. Even your zbss and cdsr routines are stripped down versions of my code : in zerobss.s and copydata.s. It is easy to see that you used these files as : templates when writing your code. But even if it would be true, writing "most : of it" is not enough to claim complete ownership and place it under a : restrictive license. Truth be told, I never looked at either of those files. Are you sure I stole them? Or is it possible that it's so simple that there just aren't many different ways to do them? : > As well as all of the .h files. : : Untrue. Anyone who compares my email explaing to you how to do it with your : actual files can see that. Let's look again at something you wrote from above, heh? % (maybe I developed it myself, I don't % remember, but it has be in use for a long time before I used it the first % time). If I cannot claim ownership of that idea, then neither can you! : I'm upset because of several things: : : [ snip ] : : P.S.: I'm out of town until tomorrow. Discussions like this do really make me : feel sad:-( It was never my intent to upset you. I did this thing, it looked cool, I wanted to make sure it stayed out there. I've got lots of code out there too, including contributions to the Linux kernel, contributions to the Etherboot project, a one handed chorded keyboard, a mud server, etc... The thing that upsets me here, that I don't think you really see, is that, if we accept your definitions, there is no way that I could ever do anything 'original'. A lot of the stuff is so simple it MUST look like someone else's work. In my last email, when I asked about "how I could do it without upsetting you", I wasn't asking about the social aspect. I was asking about the technical aspect. }> Is there any way I could have supported this target with your compiler and }> GPL'd my work without upsetting you? } }There is an easy way for this: Just ask. I have contributed to a lot of GPLed }projects. I do not believe there was any technical solution to the problem of targetting that platform that would not have looked at all like the other targets. You would have claimed I stole stuff whether I did or not. In fact you did exactly that. I wrote the zbss and cdsr routines from scratch. I'm sorry if you don't believe me. Yes, I cut the zero page variable declarations from another file. But those must be there to be able to work with your libraries. To be able to work with your libraries AND gpl my work, must I come up with new and exciting ways to declare variables? Yes, the callstack / paramstack setup looks like yours. Should I have come up with a new and exciting way to do that as well? Maybe I should have used another register. There are, after all, three to choose from. =) You cannot claim ownership of the idea of setting up a call stack or parameter stack. That's like claiming the idea of initilizing variables. Yes, the header files use an idea you mentioned, but that idea is hardly new or original either. You have no way of knowing whether I did that on my own, whether I "stole" the idea from you, whether I "stole" the idea from the linux kernel, or whether I "learned" it at school or at my job. Again my intent was not to upset you, but to make sure that my stuff stayed out there. --Adam -- adam_at_cuddlepuddle.org http://cuddlepuddle.org/~adam/pgp.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list send mail to majordomo_at_musoftware.de with the string "unsubscribe cc65" in the body(!) of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : 2002-03-28 18:07:39 CET