A lot of things have happened in the past few days concerning Zeta, BeOS, and Haiku. In order to create some order in the chaos, Eugenia and I have created a rough timeline of what happened the past 6-7 years. Read on for the timeline and some more thoughts on the matter. Update: Magnusoft ceases distribution of Zeta. Update II: Access answered the questions posed in the article.
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Member since:2007-04-01
Member since:2006-02-19
Well, but who will be guilty for possible GPL violation?
Person who don't publish changes, or company which prevents to do it by FD (U is from Bernd's side though), or person talking in the name of company (as till now no really official statement issued)?
Also, thing with "hidden" agreements don't look so simple, as you interpret it. If companies will refuse contracts which coudn't be found due internal disorder, e.g. happened in chain of bayouts, but existing in hands of other sides, it will be total crash of corporate world. Though, in our case it is speculation, as it seems Bernd still didn't show any evidence of contract, at least he didn't claim that he did.
But if he has it, things may be go much funnier - he can sue David Schlesinger personally for reputation and bussiness damage for sum, which overcomes those theoretical fines, which are, according word of mouth, included in NDA-part of his/YT contract with Palm as penalty for contract disclosure.
And don't forget, that YT is under permanent official, including tax-department-and-police, observation for couple of last months. As it is in insolvency/bankruptcy process. So, if any additional law violation, besides those "debts" will be discovered, like that bussiness was totally illegal (and, if Lefty is right - it was), we will know it officially as result of that process.
Edited 2007-04-07 13:02
Member since:2007-04-05
Hm, well.
(I'm not sure I've got you correctly, but let's run with it...)
If Mr. Korz were to have used code which is covered by the GPL as part of Zeta, as it's been sold, I'd imagine he'd have had to have adapted it for that environment in some way. If so, since the modified versions seem not to have been republished or offered for reproduction (to legitimate purchasers of binary versions of Zeta), then that would presumably put him already in violation of the licenses on, and in infringement of the copyrights of, any of the code he used in such a fashion.
Is that what you meant...?
Member since:2007-03-12
Doesn't Zeta come with music playback software? That might put them in violation of Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson's patents on MPEG Layer 3. Also, if they've included an implementation of OpenGL without proper licensing, I'd think that SGI would want to have a talk with Bernd Korz as well.
What puzzles me is how Bernd Korz hid behind a limited liability company, yet, as the "owner" of Zeta has managed to slide off the hook for his personal liability. As the original supplier of fake goods wouldn't this make him personally liable for damages? This smoke and mirrors makes my head hurt.
Member since:2006-01-26
If so, since the modified versions seem not to have been republished or offered for reproduction (to legitimate purchasers of binary versions of Zeta), then that would presumably put him already in violation of the licenses on, and in infringement of the copyrights of, any of the code he used in such a fashion.
That's the way I see it also... and from what I've heard, this has already been an issue with Zeta in the past where FSF has contacted yT/Bernd asking for them to release the modifications to GPL'd code.
I think this is where the community is torn here: Many believe that the Zeta OS code is more-or-less illegally being used now - yet there are many applications that have been added to Zeta (many pre-existing independent BeOS apps) and improved as such. These are the applications and source that many in the community were hoping Bernd Korz would subsequently provide to the community as open-source.
Likewise, Bernd and co. have written several drivers for Zeta which are otherwise unavailable for BeOS/Haiku. It would be excellent for the community as a whole if these (hopefully) non-infringing bits of code were possibly made available.
I realize that with Bernd's tarnished reputation now, it's likely that any code he attempts to provide as open-source will likely be considered "tainted" - but is there a possibility that some of it might see the light of day again?
I suppose this rests entirely on whatever the outcome of future discussions, actions, and agreements are made between Bernd and ACCESS... I'm actually hoping that something positive may still come out of this.
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2006-02-19
Tough. From this Lefty's posting i got impression, that even GPL-ed code, if used in Zeta, cannot to be published now, which creates very bad contradiction, as it should be published by license (as GPL-licensed derived work was distributed in public).
Not to say about BSD/MIT licensed pieces which are known to be created by third parties from BeOS community and then improved by YT, like some drivers.
Corporate (ACCESS) virus which polluted all what YT/Bernd touched?