On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Per Jessen wrote:
All,
having just returned from a weeks sailing in the Ionian Sea, I remembered I had a number of requests for a copy of the Award BIOS source code I mentioned in a previous posting to the list.
If you're interested, simply reply to this email.
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail. Perhaps I missed the original message to the list which dealt with this. Has it been discussed?
Brian
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Brian Hurt wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Per Jessen wrote:
All,
having just returned from a weeks sailing in the Ionian Sea, I remembered I had a number of requests for a copy of the Award BIOS source code I mentioned in a previous posting to the list.
If you're interested, simply reply to this email.
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail. Perhaps I missed the original message to the list which dealt with this. Has it been discussed?
I'm just really glad it's on the openbios list. If this discussion had appeared on any list I own I would have had to moderate the list or filter out the offers for BIOS source or just plain reject mail from people who offered it.
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
ron
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I agree. Anyone who looks at this source code and then writes (or copies) code for openbios would be doing the project a huge disfavor.
You would essential give Award an easy (very easy) way to shut down the code, and no manufacturer would touch this project with a 10ft. pole.
Unless, that is, Per Jessen has a license to distribute source code AND has the authority to release it for inclusion in Open Source licensed software.
I have spent (and continue to spend) huge amounts of time consulting about Open Source licensing issues, mostly for Global 1000 companies. The pollution of Open Source licensed code with proprietary code (coupled with a lack of responsible body for Open Source code) is the single largest fear that prevents most of these companies from using Open Source. And this is just contributing to this.
Chris.
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Brian Hurt wrote:
On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Per Jessen wrote:
All,
having just returned from a weeks sailing in the Ionian Sea, I remembered I had a number of requests for a copy of the Award BIOS source code I mentioned in a previous posting to the list.
If you're interested, simply reply to this email.
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail. Perhaps I missed the original message to the list which dealt with this. Has it been discussed?
I'm just really glad it's on the openbios list. If this discussion had appeared on any list I own I would have had to moderate the list or filter out the offers for BIOS source or just plain reject mail from people who offered it.
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
ron
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-- chris maresca internet systems architect -- www.chrismaresca.com
"linux, only up 138 days, because california has flaky power... "
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Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 10:02:06 -0600 (MDT) From: Ronald G Minnich rminnich@lanl.gov
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
I would assume that the distribution has been approved by Award? Maybe I need to go back and reread...
Eddy
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, E.B. Dreger wrote:
I would assume that the distribution has been approved by Award? Maybe I need to go back and reread...
I am pretty sure this is not the case. This code has been floating around for a while and we've never wanted to touch it here. Can you image award shipping its code in source form willingly? I find that hard to believe.
ron
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Ronald G Minnich wrote:
I'm just really glad it's on the openbios list. If this discussion had appeared on any list I own I would have had to moderate the list or filter out the offers for BIOS source or just plain reject mail from people who offered it.
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
Do you work for American Megatrends?
Your words reflect a certain letter sent from Billy G. to the Homebrew Computer Club in the 70's. Personally I see no harm in this.
The source code is proprietary, and has copyright notices all over it. So what? If we open up the hood of a rolls-royce and look at the way it's built, and try our best to produce a superior engine based on that knowledge...it classes as an educational exercise, man.
Personally I think it was disgusting of the makers of Award BIOS to keep their source code stored away, so that the world have to see a load of SPAM for 10 seconds every time they boot up their machine.
If it involves stealing a little code to ensure that we put an end to this nonsense, then so be it. It's better to be ruthless if you have public ends to serve, not the private ends of closed-shop, greedy little companies.
End of Line.
Gavin.
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Gavin Robert Brewer wrote:
Ronald G Minnich wrote:
I'm just really glad it's on the openbios list. If this discussion had appeared on any list I own I would have had to moderate the list or filter out the offers for BIOS source or just plain reject mail from people who offered it.
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
Do you work for American Megatrends?
Your words reflect a certain letter sent from Billy G. to the Homebrew Computer Club in the 70's. Personally I see no harm in this.
Well, the fact it is, both Bill and Award have more than enough money to sue this project out of existance. Just look at what happened to KIllustrator just for using a similar name, and that was just with a letter from a lawyer*.
The source code is proprietary, and has copyright notices all over it. So what? If we open up the hood of a rolls-royce and look at the way it's built, and try our best to produce a superior engine based on that knowledge...it classes as an educational exercise, man.
That may be what you think, and I don't disagree. But that's not the way the law works. To think otherwise is just naive.
Personally I think it was disgusting of the makers of Award BIOS to keep their source code stored away, so that the world have to see a load of SPAM for 10 seconds every time they boot up their machine.
The fact is that Award work hard and spent lots of money writing and developing their code. As projects like this and linuxbios show, it's non-trivial to develop such a product. I think they have a right to make money from stuff they've spend years building.
Chris.
* KIllustrator's site was shut down, the author had to spend huge amounts of time negociating with lawyers and wound up with a $2000 bill.
-- chris maresca internet systems architect -- www.chrismaresca.com
"linux, only up 138 days, because california has flaky power... "
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Chris Maresca wrote:
Well, the fact it is, both Bill and Award have more than enough money to sue this project out of existance. Just look at what happened to KIllustrator just for using a similar name, and that was just with a letter from a lawyer*.
What is it with you folks? Always so shit-scared of Micro$oft?
Let me tell you something about Apple, Micro$oft, Sun and all the other merry pirates of Silicon Valley. They STOLE all their code.
Billy G. was the worst hypocrite of all. He wrote angry letters to Homebrew, and yet he ripped of IBM to get x86DOS, and basically rename is MS-DOS. The guy is a fraud.
The source code is proprietary, and has copyright notices all over it. So what? If we open up the hood of a rolls-royce and look at the way it's built, and try our best to produce a superior engine based on that knowledge...it classes as an educational exercise, man.
That may be what you think, and I don't disagree. But that's not the way the law works. To think otherwise is just naive.
I know the law just like you. And the Law sux on this occasion.
Just dont get caught. Sun and Apple knew that, when they ripped off Xerox's work.
The fact is that Award work hard and spent lots of money writing and developing their code. As projects like this and linuxbios show, it's non-trivial to develop such a product. I think they have a right to make money from stuff they've spend years building.
Award are NOT A CHARITY. They are a profit-making organization. They should not exist in my view. BIOS should not exist in my view; it should all be done via the OS.
Everyone knows that BIOS calls are inefficient. Award are making money out of other's misery. Imagine all the man-hours lost in total, from folks waiting for their machines to boot through BIOS...it's homocide!
Better that we come up with something better. Apple had the better idea. They didnt need sh£%ty BIOS and they knew it. They let the OS handle it all. And it WAS better.
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Gavin Robert Brewer wrote:
Just dont get caught. Sun and Apple knew that, when they ripped off Xerox's work.
Actually, Xerox and Apple had a license agreement. There was no ripoff. Sun also had a license agreement, although not directly. Don't get caught up in mythology. I live in Silicon Valley (tm) and I've worked for both Apple and Sun, among others. There's not much 'stealing' going on here, that's a big myth.
And, BTW, Bill Gates _bought_ DOS from an outfit called Seattle Computer. There was no IBM DOS, IBM was running CP/M, among other things. You might be thinking of DR DOS, but that did not come out until much later.
If you want to get caught up in these myths, that's fine. But it won't help you when the hammer comes down.
Look, we all want open source bios, why spoil it by stealing someone else's code?
Anyway, I've had enough of this thread. Please move on to something more constructive.
Chris.
-- chris maresca internet systems architect -- www.chrismaresca.com
"linux, only up 138 days, because california has flaky power... "
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* Chris Maresca ckm@crust.net [010827 20:29]:
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Gavin Robert Brewer wrote:
Just dont get caught. Sun and Apple knew that, when they ripped off Xerox's work.
And, BTW, Bill Gates _bought_ DOS from an outfit called Seattle Computer. There was no IBM DOS, IBM was running CP/M, among other things. You might be thinking of DR DOS, but that did not come out until much later.
They bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and made it MS DOS.
If you want to get caught up in these myths, that's fine. But it won't help you when the hammer comes down.
Nor will anyone (else) from the OpenBIOS group.
Look, we all want open source bios, why spoil it by stealing someone else's code?
Exactly. It's the sickness found all over the open source movement that people try to copy or steal another persons (or companies) idea. We do have enough knowledge and experience to develop our own concepts so why even think about getting us in trouble with childish robin hood ideas if it's not even worth it.
Anyway, I've had enough of this thread. Please move on to something more constructive.
full ack.
Best regards, Stefan Reinauer
* Gavin Robert Brewer gavinbr@gavinbr.worldonline.co.uk [010827 19:44]:
What is it with you folks? Always so shit-scared of Micro$oft?
This is not about being scared of anything. This project is about creating a new idea, not crap based on stolen crappy ideas from the past.
Let me tell you something about Apple, Micro$oft, Sun and all the other merry pirates of Silicon Valley. They STOLE all their code.
But we are the Open Source movement. We won't steal code and we have enough free knowledge and hardware manufacturer support. If we want to see or use Award or what-ever code, we buy and use Award BIOS. Since this is not our goal, we're not going to look at this code nor take any line of it. End of discussion.
Billy G. was the worst hypocrite of all. He wrote angry letters to Homebrew, and yet he ripped of IBM to get x86DOS, and basically rename is MS-DOS. The guy is a fraud.
IBM was just plain stupid, imho. They sold a PC product based on 2/3 outsourced development with non exclusive contracts. They gave away the CPU market to Intel and the operating system market to Microsoft. No doubt, during that time (from Intel's and Microsoft's point of view) it was totally understandable what they did. In doing so they split Big Blues (IBMs) power into 3 parts (remember even most of todays democracies are based on splitting state power into 3 parts) No, I am not trying to defend any of these companies. But what happened, happened. We cannot change the past but we can affect the future. Based on this principle we're not interested in reusing proprietary ideas created by todays monopolists.
I know the law just like you. And the Law sux on this occasion.
Law isn't meant to be correct. Laws are made by those who have the power to enforce them, not neccessarily those who can make the best decisions.
Just dont get caught. Sun and Apple knew that, when they ripped off Xerox's work.
But who would be so naive to believe that posting to a publicly available mailing list that is mirrored by several archives will not get you in trouble. I am really sorry, but in which kind of dream world do you live? BTW, MS products are heavily based on XEROX' ideas but that doesn't justify using others intellectual property in this project or protect us from a large company with the law on their side.
Award are NOT A CHARITY. They are a profit-making organization. They should not exist in my view. BIOS should not exist in my view; it should all be done via the OS.
Unfortunately you don't make the law and it seems that you do not have a clue about what you are saying. How do you intend to start an OS without being able to load it first? Doesn't a person or a company still have the right to make money with ones product or ideas. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Use something that suits you, make your own, or shut up. There is very little that we can do to stop them from selling their products except to build something better and I do not intend to simply use their ideas in a project that theoreticaly could be much better and go much further.
Everyone knows that BIOS calls are inefficient. Award are making money out of other's misery. Imagine all the man-hours lost in total, from folks waiting for their machines to boot through BIOS...it's homocide!
This is the fact with all this intel based bios crap. This is the reason why we are not interested in any line of code or idea made by them. Neither from anyone specifying it legally and telling us (while not working on the project) nor illegaly. There are better concepts for boot firmware, look at Open Firmware or LinuxBIOS. The fact that the PC Bios market is polluted by monopolies does not mean that there are no better solutions to the existing problem.
Better that we come up with something better. Apple had the better idea. They didnt need sh£%ty BIOS and they knew it. They let the OS handle it all. And it WAS better.
Apple uses Open Firmware for quite some time now. So is SUN since many years. This is the goal of Open BIOS, too. I suggest anyone following this discussion to check out the documentation links on http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS before participating in any discussion on this mailing list.
Regards, Stefan Reinauer, Open BIOS project founder.
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Gavin Robert Brewer wrote:
I'm just really glad it's on the openbios list. If this discussion had appeared on any list I own I would have had to moderate the list or filter out the offers for BIOS source or just plain reject mail from people who offered it.
Yes, I think it's a terrible thing.
Do you work for American Megatrends?
No, I run the linuxbios project. You may be familiar with it, it is Open Source, GPL, it works, and it has ZERO code based on viewing proprietary sources. That's how OpenBIOS should be. I think anybody who contributes code to an Open Source BIOS project after viewing the Award BIOS is doing the project a huge disfavor, and jeopardizing it. The algorithms for bringing up hardware are incredibly hairy, and it would be too easy for Award to claim pollution if they spotted a pattern.
I think making the OpenBIOS list a relay point for the Award BIOS source is absolute stupidity -- not on Stefan's part, but on the part of the people who are offering and accepting this code.
Do you remember 1991? ATT sued a bunch of BSD projects and tied them up in court for over a year. It was a nightmare. That entire trial turned on the inclusion of four files in the end, but it was hell for everyone concerned, and it cost a lot of people a lot of money. It set the BSD effort back by over a year. If that happens to the OpenBIOS project the party is over.
I'll be polite and ignore the rest of your letter.
ron
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Hi Guys
It is with regret that I am going to drop off of this mailing list. When I signed up, I was interested in finding out what is going on in the BIOS world, and thought that there would be some interesting information available here.
However, what I have seen recently is troubleshooting a failed BIOS upgrade, offers of bootleg copies of copywriten material, and in my opinion a lack of direction or progress. I simply don't have time to wade through thirty to fifty emails per day, especially when they don't really pertain to progressing what I perceived to be the openBIOS effort.
sorry guys,
Lloyd
PS. if you don't agree with the above comments, flame all you want. My delete key still works
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Lloyd Thomson wrote:
Hi Guys
It is with regret that I am going to drop off of this mailing list. When I signed up, I was interested in finding out what is going on in the BIOS world, and thought that there would be some interesting information available here.
However, what I have seen recently is troubleshooting a failed BIOS upgrade, offers of bootleg copies of copywriten material, and in my opinion a lack of direction or progress. I simply don't have time to wade through thirty to fifty emails per day, especially when they don't really pertain to progressing what I perceived to be the openBIOS effort.
sorry guys,
Lloyd
this is my opinion , too Good-Bye
gregor kroesen
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail.
As long as none of the proprietary code is used in Open BIOS, what whould be the harm?
~Jason
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Jason Gurtz wrote:
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail.
As long as none of the proprietary code is used in Open BIOS, what whould be the harm?
Intellectual property encompasses not only code but also API's, functionality and methodology. Also, it does not matter if you have not directly copied the code, just the fact that you have, in your possession of a piece of unlicensed intellectual property means that you are liable for infringement.
Also, from a manufacturers point of view (eg. someone who would use OpenBIOS in a product), seeing this discussion would reason alone not to use it. Remember, when an intellectual property holder feels wronged (for whatever reason) and goes to court, it costs money to defend and make customers nervous. It's just not worth the risk.
It would be extremely naive to think that Award would not kill off OpenBIOS if it ever became a threat simply by using this thread. Yeah, it may still be used by a few people who know how to find it and hack it, but if the goal is to encourage manufacturers to include it in their products, I think that this thread has pretty much put an end to that.
The only hope of reversing this kind of damage at this point would be if Per Jessen (sp?) withdrew his offer. Unless, as I stated earlier, he has the authority to do this...
Chris.
-- chris maresca internet systems architect -- www.chrismaresca.com
"linux, only up 138 days, because california has flaky power... "
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On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Jason Gurtz wrote:
I am somewhat concerned about the potiential licensing and intellectual property rights problems distributing a copy of the proprietary BIOS on the open-bios mailing list, or even to a large segment of it's developers, would entail.
As long as none of the proprietary code is used in Open BIOS, what whould be the harm?
Are you willing to pay the lawyer bills to prove this? Also, I'm not sure what confidentiality agreements/non-disclosure agreements come with this, not knowing where it's comming from. I may be being excessive paranoid, I don't know. But remember that the BIOS companies are charging multiple dollars per machine for its BIOS, and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to modify the BIOS for any special reason. I don't think they would be any less vigilant (let's be nice) in protecting their income stream, than say Microsoft. As a Linux Kernel developer, would you want to be reading the source to Windows CE, even despite the fact that they've "released" it publically?
Brian
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Lloyd Thomson -
Ronald G Minnich -
Stefan Reinauer