This was just posted on the allwinner github account:

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec

This contains:

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so

This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked
up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in
2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source
code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2
Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6)

With all the previous "indiscretions", it was always possible to claim
that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many
violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source,
there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all
encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact
that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries
removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another
very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these
violations.

Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that
Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round.

To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm.
This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is
learning and willing to cooperate.

Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it
for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change.

Luc Verhaegen.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 02:06:59PM +0800, ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote:
> Hi, Luc,
>
> Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx.

It's been 4 years since your violations started. You have been told
often enough. At least from 2012 onwards Allwinner has been very aware
of the legal status of the software its business fully depends on. You
were even given a nice consistent list of issues back in August, and in
the 6 months that passed since then you have not fixed a single thing.

> We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL.

No, you have not.

> And just close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and
> API is opensource.

This is where you violate at least the ffmpeg LGPL license and breach
on2 technologies (now google) copyright with the libVP62 symbols in
there. I have been very clear and consistent about this, yet you still
either fail to or are unwilling to understand.

> We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We
> are trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us
> know, we will fix it and update it ASAP.

I have been pointing these out since at least august, quite concisely
and very understandably. And all allwinner ever does is come with
excuses and nonsense code or binary releases which just continue the
violations.

> About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the
> code to open some drivers.

Not some. ALL. As required by the GPL.

Truly unbelievable and absolutely ludicrous.

Luc Verhaegen.

>On Wed, 25/2/15, ke...@allwinnertech.com <ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:
> Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on
> Cedarx.

[snip]
 
I'm pleased to read that but in that case where are the sources?

It is not hard (English meaning: it is easy) to find how you built the various binaries and then release the code.

Please - to avoid more reminders and complaints - just get on with releasing the sources.  Delay followed by more delay really makes you look bad, which is a pity as people are trying to support your devices.

In future, just release the matching sources every time you release binaries.  It is soooo easy!

Regards,

John

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 5:55 AM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
>
> Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it
> for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change.

I think it's time for Luc to start playing nice. His toxic behavior
does not help.
Trying to berate both on list and off list, even new members to this
Google group,
is unacceptable behavior.
It makes me wonder whether his abrasive behavior was actually a factor
to the situation that we try to solve here.
It's very ironic as well!

We see constructive efforts from Allwinner to fix issues
and it makes sense for the community to be constructive as well.
I do not even see an issue filed at
https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/issues

Being constructive and nice takes you a long way,
Simos

I wanna say big THANKS to Allwinner for this step, please continue to work in this direction.
I look forward to see more source code from you guys.
One small comment is it will be great if you guys can also use git internally, so we can see the changes along the way.

Clement
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On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 1:06 AM, ke...@allwinnertech.com
<ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:
> Hi, Luc,
>
> Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx.
> We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. And just close the
> code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is opensource.
> We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We are
> trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us know, we will
> fix it and update it ASAP.
>
> About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the code to
> open some drivers.

Kevin, there are advantages to being open source. For example my
company tried using the A20 for a product two years ago. We spent a
lot of effort developing it and never could get the video compression
working the way we needed it to work. I sent several bugs into
Allwinner which got fixed, but the fixes came back about eight months
after I had sent the problems in. That was far too late to save our
project.

Since we couldn't get the A20 version of the product going we finally
gave up and switched to a different CPU vendor.  All of this messing
around probably cost us $250,000. Plus we are paying more for the new
CPU. But the new one works correctly, which is the most important
point.

If I had the source to the compression code I probably could have
fixed it myself and sent out a patch. Or maybe I could have inserted
debug printouts and narrowed the problem down to a very specific bug
report which would have made it easy for you to fix. Instead I was
just stuck using a black box which didn't always do the right thing
and I had no ability to fix. We finally gave up and switched CPUs.

Being open source allows other people to help you improve the code.
There are a lot of highly skilled programmers working on Linux. When
shipping their products is dependent on getting Allwinner code fixed,
they will go in and fix bugs if they have the source code. They will
also send you these fixes since they want them incorporated into the
official releases.

----

On another topic - kernel drivers. Closed source, out of tree kernel
drivers are a security nightmare.

Consider what happens when a security bug is found in the Linux
kernel. The bug is disclosed and a fix is issued. For vendors on
mainline they can quickly incorporate these patches and send our
dynamic updates out to their products.

But what about closed drivers? It is easy to crack into old kernels.
The instructions on how to do it are included in the security
vulnerability disclosure.  Closed drivers prevent me from applying
these security patches and moving onto a newer kernel. Instead I have
to wait until Allwinner decides to update their kernels - which may be
years.

This attack method is used a lot in the wild. It is how the first
attack against Sony was done (not the current one). They were running
three year old kernels on their servers. Somebody just looked up the
vulnerabilities that had been fixed and used one to walk right into
their corporate network.

This is a not a good thing for someone like Allwinner who is making
security camera chips now.

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jons...@gmail.com

Hi,

On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:06:59 +0800 "ke...@allwinnertech.com"
<ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:
> Hi, Luc,
>
> Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx.

That is the right thing, and thank you for this statement.

> We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. And just
> close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is

Why is close?
Please open the code of Video Engine hardware.

If allwinner still isn't aware. The Video Engine hardware was successful
reversed engineering more that 1 year already. With the result been the
fantastic 100% open source libvdpau-sunxi implementation.
http://linux-sunxi.org/VE_Register_guide
There isn't anything to hide.

Allwinner only has to win by publising more "open" information about
the video engine hardware.
By the means of open source code, or any form of hardware documentation.

I, as one of the "Video Engine hardware reverse engineering" developers
that wishes to have a proper 100% open source mainlined kernel driver.
Ask cooperation from allwinner.

Thanks.
Manuel Braga

> opensource. We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues
> still existed. We are trying to do better, if you found any GPL
> issue, please let us know, we will fix it and update it ASAP.
>
> About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the
> code to open some drivers. Thanks.
>
> Best Regards.
> ________________________________
> ke...@allwinnertech.com
>

> From: Luc Verhaegen<mailto:li...@skynet.be>
> Date: 2015-02-25 11:55
> To: linux...@googlegroups.com<mailto:linux...@googlegroups.com>
> CC: Meng Zhang<mailto:ke...@allwinnertech.com>;
> sh...@allwinnertech.com<mailto:sh...@allwinnertech.com> Subject:
--

On 02/25/15 12:15, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> We see constructive efforts from Allwinner to fix issues and it makes
> sense for the community to be constructive as well.

i see *words* saying that they would fix issues. i see no *actions*.
and that has been true for a very, very, very long time.


--
simon

Simon Kenyon
e: simonc...@gmail.com
m: +353 86 240 0005
l: http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/simon-kenyon/0/6b2/744/
s: simonckenyon
t: @simonckenyon
g: google.com/+SimonKenyon

Wrong! Luc is being overly nice. We write and release code under the *terms* of the GPL, those are the legal terms we wish for *our* work to be used under. Allwinner make huge volumes of money off *our* work. Except us to be filing suite with FSF to ensure these violations are chased up!

Allwinner can cut the shit, they have plenty of money and resources to see this is resolved by weeks end! None of this my favor company is my friend, they said nice words, pat pat on the back.. crap.. Luc does not need to be 'nice' to Allwinner, Allwinner needs to comply with the *law* period !

Regards,

Hi,
Sorry, but I really don't understand your attitude, it seems that you
don't know what you are talking about.

Have you seen the "code" released by Allwinner?

It's of no use, only a little extra layer over it's GPL infringing
"closed" code. Non working code like that:

 int SecureMemAdapterRead(void *src, void *dest, size_t n)
 {
 return n;
 }
 int SecureMemAdapterWrite(void *src, void *dest, size_t n)
 {
 return n;
 }
 int SecureMemAdapterSet(void *s, int c, size_t n)
 {
 return 0;
 }
 void * SecureMemAdapterGetPhysicAddress(void *virt)
 {
 return NULL;
 }
 void * SecureMemAdapterGetVirtualAddress(void *phy)
 {
 return NULL;
 }
 void* SecureMemAdapterGetPhysicAddressCpu(void *virt)
 {
 return NULL;
 }
 void* SecureMemAdapterGetVirtualAddressCpu(void *phy)
 {
 return NULL;
 }

It is a joke. And they *know* they are using GPL code inside the binary blobs.

So, please, don't kill the messenger.

Being ignorant makes you.. ?

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootloader/issues


Päikest,
Priit Laes :)

Makes me jokingly wonder why Linus himself hasn't given AW the finger yet. He did so when he expressed his disgust with Nvidia's way of dealing with the open-source community; not sure if it accounted for the company eventually cooperating, but it sounded like a swift kick in the behind.

Now, with all due respect to AW, and I didn't mean to be rude, but they wouldn't be subjected to so much scorn if they, as Luc put it, would just learn to play by the rules. It ain't as simple, I know. but people wouldn't look after someone if it wasn't for them doing what's reasonable and good, right?

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 11:55:25 AM UTC+8, Luc Verhaegen wrote:

Am 25.02.2015, 13:15 Uhr, schrieb Simos Xenitellis  
<simos...@googlemail.com>:
Just my two cents about Luc:

I recently dared entering the irc sunxi chat and obviously disturbed the  
experts there with Luc loading off his anger because I had bought a  
BananaPi which he thinks is kind of a parasitic product o_O

Immediately I also received the message that I better do not weigh each of  
his words, so his very special personal style must be known to insiders. I  
give credit to those who deliver excellent code, they are entitled to  
communicate like nerds :O

Regarding the GPL violations:
Imho it is obvious that Allwinner did violate it, as many other companies  
do it every day. I think it is necessary to regularly put a finger in  
these wounds and be vigilant to change that situation.

BUT: We need results and therefore it is better to have good relationship  
with the companies while politely pushing them everyday in that direction.

 From many years of industrial experience I do know that most probably  
those companies do not intentionally violate GPL. They are just busily  
struggling to survive in these extremely fast moving markets and do not  
have time and resources to care for this kind of 'details'. This does not  
excuse it or embellish anything, but that is how organizations operate.

Therefore, when David Lanzendörfer travels to Shenzen and get's personal  
contact with engineers at Allwinner this imho is the very best possibility  
to improve that situation. Let us give him a fair chance to prove the  
usefulness right now.

I.Irgendeiner

You have a point there, besides the language barrier of course.

On 02/26/15 08:54, Irgendeiner wrote:
> From many years of industrial experience I do know that most probably
> those companies do not intentionally violate GPL. They are just busily
> struggling to survive in these extremely fast moving markets and do
> not have time and resources to care for this kind of 'details'. This
> does not excuse it or embellish anything, but that is how
> organizations operate.

i too am a software developer "struggling to survive in these extremely
fast moving markets"
but *i* don't willfully break licence agreements just to get the job done.

Well, we are in the same boat as Jon Smirl point it out. 

I'd be curious where all the law practitioners stand it this. Chinese earned their bad reputation by hard work, by stealing intellectual but not only properties. It's not a prejudice that everybody dislike them, those who do have a valid reason. Again, I'm curious, I mean, we get to see all this lawyers and their petty quarrels over billions of dollars all over in popular media.. those vs this vs them vs that vs slide button, etc. Personally I'd love to see AllWinner gets their products !banned for instance in the whole US. Would this not help?

>  From many years of industrial experience I do know that most probably  
> those companies do not intentionally violate GPL. They are just busily  
> struggling to survive in these extremely fast moving markets and do not  
> have time and resources to care for this kind of 'details'. This does not  
> excuse it or embellish anything, but that is how organizations operate.

If I cannot stay in business operating legally, my business model is wrong and I deserve to go bankrupt. Operating like this for several years is nothing short of criminal.

Where is the respect for the authors of the original software in this discussion?

Instead of whining about him calling you out on your years of noncompliance how about you start doing your fucking job.  I hope someone with standing takes this to court and sues for damages as it is the only way anything will happen in a reasonable time frame.

Yeah, the authors of the software you built your business on do
deserve some respect.

Then again, legal and criminal is not all that clear. It turns out
that in China not adhering to US law does not necessarily drive you
out of business. Or not honoring the rights some US geek theoretically
has even under Chinese copyright law if such thing even exists.

And again, even western companies like nVidia are not much different
from Allwinner. They delivered (or let their hw oem partners deliver)
butchered binary Android SDKs when it seemed practical and now they
are starting mainline kernel work when that seems practical.

And again, if you are in software business in the west then any patent
troll can sue you out of business anytime unless you are the size of
IBM. Seriously, it does not matter that in the EU software patents are
(maybe still) illegal. The patent office did and still does grants
them. And it does not matter that the patent may not actually apply to
your work. You still have to hire a lawyer and go to court if they sue
you. And the cost of that may very well be orders of magnitude higher
than the sales of small software firm.

Thanks

Michal

fre 2015-02-27 klockan 00:04 -0800 skrev pel...@gmail.com:

> Personally I'd love to see AllWinner gets their products !banned for
> instance in the whole US. Would this not help?

The western world is a relatively small market for Allwinner. Their main
market is China and related countries.

Regards
Henrik

I think they couldn't post the source code because is not easy as we presume. Their hardware are rip off of other hardware implementations. So if they release the source code, the hardware companies can sue them. And it is a more serious business than a gpl violation bothering some few angry developers. I hope I'm wrong.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 04:55:15AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> This was just posted on the allwinner github account:
>
> https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec
>
> This contains:
>
> https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so
>
> This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked
> up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in
> 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source
> code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2
> Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6)
>
> With all the previous "indiscretions", it was always possible to claim
> that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many
> violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source,
> there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all
> encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact
> that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries
> removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another
> very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these
> violations.
>
> Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that
> Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round.
>
> To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm.
> This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is
> learning and willing to cooperate.
>
> Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it
> for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change.
>
> Luc Verhaegen.

So now there is a LICENSE file stating that the code in
https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec is LGPL?

So Allwinner believes that by sticking the LGPL on a _binary_ solves all
the problems? Just like it seems to believe that removing all binaries
from a kernel tree solves all problems with the GPL?

Really?

This is simply ridiculous.

Luc Verhaegen.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 04:55:15AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:

...

>
> So now there is a LICENSE file stating that the code in
> https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec is LGPL?
>
> So Allwinner believes that by sticking the LGPL on a _binary_ solves all
> the problems? Just like it seems to believe that removing all binaries
> from a kernel tree solves all problems with the GPL?
>
> Really?
>
> This is simply ridiculous.
>

This guy is so toxic. Apparently it's an attitude style to be
permanently negative.
You give him caviar and he complains that it's black.
Or a VIN ROMANEE CONTI 1955 and he complains that it's too old.

I do not know whether there will be more commits to that repo.
Just in case there are, a typical person would refrain from making
such comments.

Simos

Sure it's PITA. But what you are implying is that it's OK to be abusive to,
let's say, your significant other because they burnt the food while
you have been working for 12 hours straight.

I'll try to summarize the thread and restart it.

Simos

Simos,

I am corrosive and bitter, but perhaps i am not the toxic one here.

All we ever see you do is trash me. You have written no code, you have
not contributed to the wiki, you only now spend some time on irc to try
to clean up your image. You started calling for banishing me, while
trying to instigate a fork, almost as soon as you got here. And you try
to post about every little positive thing that allwinner does (while
allwinner ignores its hard legal responsibilities), to try to take
credit for them and to try artificially gain any form of standing here.

Perhaps you and Allwinner do not realize this. But linux-sunxi does not
need Allwinner, Allwinner needs linux-sunxi. What linux-sunxi requires
from Allwinner is a legal matter, and a pretty open and shut case at
that. Allwinner trying to make their mole a part of this community this
crudely or artificially, while so badly messing up the basics, that is
not only counterproductive, it is quite preposterous.

Stop trying to hollow out Allwinners hard legal requirements.

Luc Verhaegen.

On 03/04/15 12:51, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> I'll try to summarize the thread and restart it. Simos

please don't

--
simon

Simon Kenyon
e: simonc...@gmail.com
m: +353 86 240 0005
l: http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/simon-kenyon/0/6b2/744/
s: simonckenyon
t: @simonckenyon
g: google.com/+SimonKenyon

>On Wed, 4/3/15, Simon Kenyon <simonc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/04/15 12:51, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> > I'll try to summarize the thread and restart it. Simos
 
> please don't
 

+1

I see Luc as basically in the right.  I wouldn't support every little detail or his manner of expressing himself in every case but overall it's time Allwinner behaved properly.

It would be "fun" if someone got embargoes on Allwinner products for USA, EU & other places such that because of their legal violations their products were banned from sale.  Not fun as in I would like it but so Allwinner would have little choice but to at long last do the right things.

No-one made Allwinner use GPL code, they chose to.  So, they have to comply with its terms.

John

@Allwinner staff

guys where is the A80 vpu / gpu hardware acceleration in linux / ubuntu / kodi?

I sugest you to hire Luc Verhaegen if you guys are not able to provide this A80 linux vp/gpu hardware accelerated support.

The end users from freaktab forum and tronsmart forum keep waiting to see this happen.

Do you really want us the end users to boycott your Allwinner products?

 

@Roberto
asuming allwinner has did copy the hardware (speaking about A80 sun9i) and the reason of violating GPL's and not publishing sources is might be possible to get sued by original silicon vendor ... but the question is which silicon vendor uses big.Little + powerVR gpu?
Reading around there is no such silicon vendor who will have big.Little architecture with PowerVR gpu inside.

@All others

Boycotting Allwinner products is a bad thing but possible and usable after all also very easy to achieve it.
Commercial products forums such as AVS , freaktab and a lot more other waiting just a sign to start the media lynching over Allwinner

Maybe there is no need for a media lynching and boycotting after all .... each silicon vendor have to protect his patents and intelectual property.

Maybe following the same thin line of Amlogic or Freescale vendors would be the solution .... i don't know.

I saw a lot of buyers who own A80 based boxes awaiting  some good signs from Allwinner ... for them patience is not a virtue...

Luc, of course it is your personal decision to organize a shitstorm when  
you believe that it results in compliance, but I have many doubts about  
that.

However, I would hope that you organize it without referring to the sunxi  
project and list, because imho the project would be more harmed than  
helped!

I.Irgendeiner

On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 04:55:57PM +0100, Irgendeiner wrote:
> Am 04.03.2015, 12:57 Uhr, schrieb Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be>:
>

>> So now there is a LICENSE file stating that the code in
>> https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec is LGPL?
>>
>> So Allwinner believes that by sticking the LGPL on a _binary_ solves all
>> the problems? Just like it seems to believe that removing all binaries
>> from a kernel tree solves all problems with the GPL?
>>
>> Really?
>>
>> This is simply ridiculous.
>>
>> Luc Verhaegen.
>>
> Luc, of course it is your personal decision to organize a shitstorm when  
> you believe that it results in compliance, but I have many doubts about  
> that.
>
> However, I would hope that you organize it without referring to the sunxi
> project and list, because imho the project would be more harmed than  
> helped!

This is not a new issue, far from it. This has been going on for years
and what you see now is the culmination of years of asking nicely and
either being ignored or getting fed bullshit excuses.

Luc Verhaegen.

Hi,

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 09:46:07 -0300 Rodrigo Pereira
<rodrigo2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is because reverse engeneering is a PITA, I suppose.
>
> http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX/Reverse_Engineering
>

I disagree.
Reverse engineering is an enjoyable and fun thing to do.
And as can be see in the above url, it only took a space of a few weeks
to get successful results, with the majority of the work done by only
one person.

What is PITA, is to be ignored.

After all this work done, we(the people that work by reverse
engineering this video engine, so that would be possible to write a
proper driver that can be mainlined).

What we get? Just indifference that the reverse engineering effort even
exists.
Look at this maillist, people here begging allwinner for a binary with
a correct license (because without a license without issues, nobody
that wants to stay lawful can even use the binary).
And for what?, this binary will not magical resolve all the things, this
binary is a stopper for a proper driver, this binary can't be part of
mainline kernel.
Don't forget what happened around two years ago, when the developers of
an unnamed favorite media player tried to add hardware acceleration.

What we get? Endless users asking why it doesn't work, but incapable in
recognizing the work that must be done before.
In the end, the users expect all from us, but is not enough.


You know, if we(the reverse engineering people) had a bit more support,
we would be motivated to work a bit harder, so that maybe today we all
would be much happier.
And this page would have progressed much more.
http://linux-sunxi.org/VE_Planning


--
Manuel Braga

My two cents:
Stop asking for fixing and start doing the legal stuff (sue for example)
They have 4 years to fix, they do nothing.
they release non functional patches, and they not release the code correctly.
They reply to simpleness and notes in a attempt to avoid or deviate the issue.

You have 2 options:
1) start doing legal actions
2) keep play nice an 'spect they overabusse that to keep another 4 years unpunnished (no pun intended) violating (l)gpl and releasing non functinal code like now.

On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 9:10 AM,  <prf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My two cents:
> Stop asking for fixing and start doing the legal stuff (sue for example)
> They have 4 years to fix, they do nothing.
> they release non functional patches, and they not release the code correctly.
> They reply to simpleness and notes in a attempt to avoid or deviate the issue.
>
> You have 2 options:
> 1) start doing legal actions

The issue is that a copyright holder must start this action, i.e.
someone who's code is affected by their actions.

From what I've read, most of the GPL enforcement lawsuits have been of
the "no source" variety and involved busybox as the authors of that
software are small in number and are interested in pursuing GPL
enforcement. (This is why there's now a competitor called "toolbox":
companies were sick of being sued over busybox.) I do not believe that
anyone has successfully pursued GPL enforcement over Linux itself,
however I'd love to be corrected.

The fact that the kernel tree is essentially the full source with a
couple of blobs will also complicate things: Allwinner is likely to
"comply" by releasing code without the blobs and associated
functionality as that's easier. Luc's definitive proof in the original
post is a good starting point, however it requires that ffmpeg and On2
/ Google sue and is only one file of many. (I've also seen instances
like this "resolved" by the company releasing new blobs that don't
have the proof people saw, i.e. all symbols renamed, code minimally
obfuscated, etc.)

Legal action is likely to end up being an uphill battle regardless of
which avenue is pursued.

Personally I'm exceptionally disappointed that Linaro has let them
anywhere near their table with these GPL violations unresolved.
(However Linaro's track record isn't the best.)

> 2) keep play nice an 'spect they overabusse that to keep another 4 years unpunnished (no pun intended) violating (l)gpl and releasing non functinal code like now.

Apart from raising awareness and talking to Allwinner, we don't have a
lot of realistic options.

Thanks,

--
Julian Calaby

Email: julian...@gmail.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/julian.calaby/

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 3:10 PM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 02:31:41PM +0200, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 04:55:15AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
>> ...
>> >
>> > So now there is a LICENSE file stating that the code in
>> > https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec is LGPL?
>> >
>> > So Allwinner believes that by sticking the LGPL on a _binary_ solves all
>> > the problems? Just like it seems to believe that removing all binaries
>> > from a kernel tree solves all problems with the GPL?
>> >
>> > Really?
>> >
>> > This is simply ridiculous.
>> >
>>
>> This guy is so toxic. Apparently it's an attitude style to be
>> permanently negative.
>> You give him caviar and he complains that it's black.
>> Or a VIN ROMANEE CONTI 1955 and he complains that it's too old.
>>
>> I do not know whether there will be more commits to that repo.
>> Just in case there are, a typical person would refrain from making
>> such comments.
>>
>> Simos
>
> Simos,
>
> I am corrosive and bitter, but perhaps i am not the toxic one here.
>

Luc,

Hi. You are not a bad person. We first met at XDS2008, so I have
somewhat first-hand experience.
We even had lunch/dinner at the pub and you behaved as a normal human
being to the waiter;
I do not think there was trimmed pubic hair in the haggis we all ate.

You really try to make good things and help the projects that you are active in.
However, in this thing called "community building", it's not your cup of tea.

You try to insult new contributors into doing NewDevice pages on the Wiki
but you end up sending them away. The worst part is that others in the list
can see the mess and will not touch the wiki either. Also, edit-war
with new contributors?
The solution here is to get others to help out and you do *not* get involved.

You might want to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM
which discusses the subtleties of community building.

> All we ever see you do is trash me. You have written no code, you have
> not contributed to the wiki, you only now spend some time on irc to try
> to clean up your image.

That's an attempt to divert the discussion to me in person. I am not the story.
Unlike what you claim above, I actually contributed. If you really want to go
through this avenue: if I prove you wrong, you back off entirely from all this.

> You started calling for banishing me, while
> trying to instigate a fork, almost as soon as you got here. And you try
> to post about every little positive thing that allwinner does (while
> allwinner ignores its hard legal responsibilities), to try to take
> credit for them and to try artificially gain any form of standing here.
>

Personally I cannot think of a way to gain something here.
Gain reputation among you all? I respect all of you, but no.

In your case, you have things to lose from this community. You have invested
in this project. You have invested so much that you would be even a
suitable recruit
for Allwinner. Even having access to internal documents and source
in order to produce a proper libvdpau.
But sadly, you come off as a loose cannon. It's scary.
It does not appear that you have a flexible strategy. In fact it's so
inflexible that your
only way to win is if Allwinner says: "fuck my life, get this ssh
account and take everything".

> Perhaps you and Allwinner do not realize this. But linux-sunxi does not
> need Allwinner, Allwinner needs linux-sunxi. What linux-sunxi requires
> from Allwinner is a legal matter, and a pretty open and shut case at
> that. Allwinner trying to make their mole a part of this community this
> crudely or artificially, while so badly messing up the basics, that is
> not only counterproductive, it is quite preposterous.
>

I would love to see all source free and open-source. And most importantly,
all the companies behind it, to actually believe in the benefits.
Due to v2 in GPL, your stick is not long enough.
They can adhere to the license but still be stuck.

In addition, an actual strategy to get them all into free and open-source
is if you make all sort of efforts/compromises to have one SoC
completely and fully free/open-source.
Then, promote that SoC as loud as possible,
so the others would have to follow on their own volition.
This is especially true for the GPU in ARM SoCs.

I noticed in your recent blog post that you are starting linux-exynos.org.

Simos

This whole fuss is blown out of proportion. Luc is surely right to
point out this issue (yet again) and insist on resolving the LGPL
compliance issues. However having two (!) phoronix articles posted and
a bunch of new weirdos attracted by them to troll here is also going
overboard.

However Allwnner did not really have to violate the FFmpeg LGPL license
in the first place. They only needed to use it is a shared library.
For example, hardware accelerated video playback using MPlayer and
the reverse engineered https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi
code is also relying on the FFmpeg library somewhere in the pipeline,
but does not have to directly mix it with the CedarX VPU code in the
same compiled binary.

So at the end of the day, the LGPL license is violated in letter, but
not in spirit. They just made a mistake. And yes, they also did not
take reasonable efforts to fix it until now. But all of this looks
kind of like getting lynched for jaywalking.

What makes me particularly annoyed about all this fuss is that the
timing could not have been more wrong. Allwinner is currently pushing
their code to github, making some mistakes and fixing rough edges in
the process:

    https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootloader/issues/4
    https://github.com/allwinner-zh/linux-3.4-sunxi/issues/5

And it is a move in the right direction, which benefits the free
software community. The CedarX blob was also pushed there as part
of this activity. Maybe Allwinner is finally up to resolving the LGPL
issue in the CedarX code too? Even if not by releasing full sources,
but by isolating the FFmpeg code into a separate shared library.
But now they are being trolled for (admittedly still unsuccessfully)
trying to do the right thing...

BTW, the lawsuit-happy zealots may also find some extra inspiration
for their future legal actions here:

    https://libav.org/shame.html

--
Best regards,
Siarhei Siamashka

On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 02:13:48AM +0200, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 3:10 PM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 02:31:41PM +0200, Simos Xenitellis wrote:

> > Simos,
> >
> > I am corrosive and bitter, but perhaps i am not the toxic one here.
> >
>
> Luc,
>
> Hi. You are not a bad person. We first met at XDS2008, so I have
> somewhat first-hand experience.
> We even had lunch/dinner at the pub and you behaved as a normal human
> being to the waiter;
> I do not think there was trimmed pubic hair in the haggis we all ate.

I have no recollection of this, or what you mean by the above.

> You really try to make good things and help the projects that you are active in.
> However, in this thing called "community building", it's not your cup of tea.

While you believe that it is your cup of tea, par excellence, right?

> You try to insult new contributors into doing NewDevice pages on the Wiki
> but you end up sending them away. The worst part is that others in the list
> can see the mess and will not touch the wiki either. Also, edit-war
> with new contributors?

At one point there was the accidental GPL compliance. Today it is the
mainline effort, the new device howto (and related howtos) and the
number of documented devices that puts sunxi seriously apart from other
soc projects.

Feel free to show _all_ the instances that an edit war has happened, i
will be happy to explain the backgrounds of them (if you can even find
multiple), and how useful those people have been or would have been. You
mention the svn guys toxic talk below, i will refer to that extensively
in my reply.

> The solution here is to get others to help out and you do *not* get involved.
>
> You might want to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM
> which discusses the subtleties of community building.

I was wondering when you were going to bring that one up. Watch it
again, and take particular notice of how it talks about documentation
and actual contributions.

> > All we ever see you do is trash me. You have written no code, you have
> > not contributed to the wiki, you only now spend some time on irc to try
> > to clean up your image.
>
> That's an attempt to divert the discussion to me in person. I am not the story.

Should I remind you that this started out as me pointing out Allwinners
role in the blatant LGPL violation that is cedarx, and I wasn't the one
to go for a personal attack?

> Unlike what you claim above, I actually contributed. If you really want to go
> through this avenue: if I prove you wrong, you back off entirely from all this.

In comparison to the noise you are making, and how you like to portray
yourself, you have contributed surprisingly little.

> > You started calling for banishing me, while
> > trying to instigate a fork, almost as soon as you got here. And you try
> > to post about every little positive thing that allwinner does (while
> > allwinner ignores its hard legal responsibilities), to try to take
> > credit for them and to try artificially gain any form of standing here.
> >
>
> Personally I cannot think of a way to gain something here.
> Gain reputation among you all? I respect all of you, but no.

Really?

> In your case, you have things to lose from this community. You have invested
> in this project. You have invested so much that you would be even a
> suitable recruit
> for Allwinner. Even having access to internal documents and source
> in order to produce a proper libvdpau.
> But sadly, you come off as a loose cannon. It's scary.
> It does not appear that you have a flexible strategy. In fact it's so
> inflexible that your
> only way to win is if Allwinner says: "fuck my life, get this ssh
> account and take everything".

Again, you seem to be downplaying as compliance with the licenses
Allwinner depends on fully as "libv and his ridiculous demands".
Allwinner has had loads of time to get there, and probably even more
warnings or full and complete descriptions of the problems. Yet all
we get is these bullshit games with the kernel and cedar code, and some
"sill" (thanks Neal) who just plays political games and little else.

> > Perhaps you and Allwinner do not realize this. But linux-sunxi does not
> > need Allwinner, Allwinner needs linux-sunxi. What linux-sunxi requires
> > from Allwinner is a legal matter, and a pretty open and shut case at
> > that. Allwinner trying to make their mole a part of this community this
> > crudely or artificially, while so badly messing up the basics, that is
> > not only counterproductive, it is quite preposterous.
> >
>
> I would love to see all source free and open-source. And most importantly,
> all the companies behind it, to actually believe in the benefits.
> Due to v2 in GPL, your stick is not long enough.
> They can adhere to the license but still be stuck.

Well, let's wait and see how long that stick really is. Last time i had
this postponed as i believed allwinner was actually and finally going to
change. And then that "gpl compliant" kernel happened and now the lgpled
binary happened... Now i hope to see this go all the way.

> In addition, an actual strategy to get them all into free and open-source
> is if you make all sort of efforts/compromises to have one SoC
> completely and fully free/open-source.
> Then, promote that SoC as loud as possible,
> so the others would have to follow on their own volition.
> This is especially true for the GPU in ARM SoCs.

Downplaying again.

We did all at one point champion sun[457]i. And then Allwinner started
violating the licenses of both uboot and the kernel, increasing with
each generation. This was clearly documented, but you seem to willfully
ignore that now. That link you posted talks about documentation a lot,
try watching it again.

You confuse the (l)gpl compliance issues with opening up GPUs where
there is no legal requirement to do so. And in the case of open source
GPUs, i suggest you read up on my statements about the different ARM GPU
vendors.

> I noticed in your recent blog post that you are starting linux-exynos.org.

Go read that again as well.

Luc Verhaegen.

I think we need to bring this back to simple.

1) as FOSS not out to harm allwinnertech all FOSS want is conformance with license.

Reality here the two worst laws to break as a hardware vendor is copyright and trademark.   Serous-ally.   Both you can enforce by customs both can cause product destruction.   This is pure nightmare because what would happen if a developer of the work decided to take the customs path a stack of product for one of allwinner customers would get to the board be ruled as contain copyright infringing work then crushed.   This has happened to gameconsoles and other items in the past.   The buyer is left out of pocket.

Its basically a common mistake since FOSS does not act often that it does not have teeth.   The reality most FOSS developers know they have the teeth to put a company out of business so try negotiation.

https://libav.org/shame.html  you will notice all the ones here are fairly much software companies.  Developers don't have very effective teeth to go after software companies.  Also remember even if the infringement is preformed by a sub-company the fact its on your device can make that device destroyable and you will be expected to get the compensation out the sub company that provided you with the infringing software.

The reality is you are better to break patent law than trademark or copyright as hardware company.

Something Allwinner take on board is release the source after the fact is an extremely bad idea.   If you go to Intel and Amd you will notice they release the open source code before the chip ship.   This means the chips cannot be destroyed at customs.   You are only able to catch up with the source release after the fact because at this stage the FOSS developers are being kind.

Siarhei Siamashka the case of the firmware not using the Linux kernel firmware loader what promises that we will not have that happen again.  Is there staff training to make sure this does not happen again.

Siarhei Siamashka there are compliance tools.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/compliance/tools
Are you using them.  If not please start using them.   If you are using them please open bug reports for the cases that these issues got missed.

http://www.binaryanalysis.org/en/home

This tool is built particularly to allow FOSS developers to locate infringement in closed source binaries.   Basically FOSS developers have tools to find infringement and they have made the tools for your side to detect infringement before it gets out the door.   Please allwinner stop messing with them because when they do decide to hit it is going to hurt.   I like your chips don't want to have the case that I have ordered something only to find its been crushed because you were infringing.

Basically due to the tools it would have taken Luc Verhaegen bugger all effort to find the issue.   Since it takes bugger all effort why did not the allwinner staff locate it.   Maybe they are not tooled up correctly and maybe this is the cause of all the on going issues.

If you can prove a fault with the FOSS compliance tool that it failed to detect it at least you have workable excuse and evidence that you attempted to be conforming but this still does not help you if developer has chosen to go the customs path to copyright enforcement.  

The best option is do not infringe and if you do don't just play it down have some decent explanation in a form of an operational failure of something or someone at least then the FOSS developers finding the problems walk way kind of ok and are unlikely to take it further.

Peter Dolding

ons 2015-03-04 klockan 17:41 +0000 skrev Manuel Braga:

> What we get? Just indifference that the reverse engineering effort even
> exists.

Sorry you get this impression.

I know I have been silent, but that's mostly because video is not
something I am interested in, and especially not Allwinners binary take
on it. But it does not mean that I am indifferent to your effort, not at
all, to me the documentation of the CedarX hardware and proof of concept
software was and is very important, even if far from feature complete.

> In the end, the users expect all from us, but is not enough.

Yes, all software magically works, and can be implemented without any
documentation or even half-working binaries to reverse...

> You know, if we(the reverse engineering people) had a bit more support,
> we would be motivated to work a bit harder, so that maybe today we all
> would be much happier.
> And this page would have progressed much more.
> http://linux-sunxi.org/VE_Planning

I don't know what to say other than community needs a critical mass of
interested people to motivate itself in each area, and stamina to ignore
users who thinks everything just should work. If there is just one man
driving then motivation undoubtedly fails after a while.

Unfortunately the ratio users vs developers is not the best in this
world, especially not when talking lowlevel hardware releated matters.

Regards
Henrik

Many of you say video is not important .... its so wrong ...

Video is the most important ... commercial wise
For your knowledge only chinese Tronsmart brand sold more than 100k devices based on A80 sun9i platform under Draco brand boxes ...

i don't want to mention all other brands that sold same platform boxes ... some of the end user buyers want to stick to android but many of them would like to go Ubuntu , Debian OSMC , Openelec linux Kodi etc etc... with desktop with vpu gpu hardware acceleration.

Nobody can argue against the consumers just because they are the one who bring the profit to companies as Allwinner.

Why not fixing the video vpu gpu issues of Allwinner SoC's first ?
I am supporting Luc at least from this point of view.
 

Hello,

On 5 March 2015 at 18:35, Henrik Nordström <hen...@henriknordstrom.net> wrote:
> ons 2015-03-04 klockan 17:41 +0000 skrev Manuel Braga:
>
>> What we get? Just indifference that the reverse engineering effort even
>> exists.
>
> Sorry you get this impression.
>
> I know I have been silent, but that's mostly because video is not
> something I am interested in, and especially not Allwinners binary take
> on it. But it does not mean that I am indifferent to your effort, not at
> all, to me the documentation of the CedarX hardware and proof of concept
> software was and is very important, even if far from feature complete.
>

It WorksForMe(tm). I can play video with mplayer which is how I use
video most of the time even on systems with multiple choices of a
media player. And with opensource drivers which I can expect to
continue working as long as sunxi hardware has any use. Thanks for
that.

Yes, it is a gross hack. But for more progress the other parts to
which the VE engine is to be hooked have to be ready - like the KMS
driver. Technically one can be writing a VE driver without a KMS
driver which is then just plugged in ... and you can see all the bugs
then.

On 4 March 2015 at 14:10, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 02:31:41PM +0200, Simos Xenitellis wrote:

>> On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Luc Verhaegen <li...@skynet.be> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 04:55:15AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
>> ...
>> >
>> > So now there is a LICENSE file stating that the code in
>> > https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec is LGPL?
>> >
>> > So Allwinner believes that by sticking the LGPL on a _binary_ solves all
>> > the problems? Just like it seems to believe that removing all binaries
>> > from a kernel tree solves all problems with the GPL?
>> >
>> > Really?
>> >
>> > This is simply ridiculous.
>> >
>>
>> This guy is so toxic. Apparently it's an attitude style to be
>> permanently negative.
>> You give him caviar and he complains that it's black.
>> Or a VIN ROMANEE CONTI 1955 and he complains that it's too old.
>>
>> I do not know whether there will be more commits to that repo.
>> Just in case there are, a typical person would refrain from making
>> such comments.
>>
>> Simos
>

> Simos,
>
> I am corrosive and bitter, but perhaps i am not the toxic one here.

Corrosive and bitter is enough to drive off new users which can
potentially become new contributors.

Maybe you don't need new community members and are fine with writing a
KMS driver in a year or two that nobody but you ever uses.

But linux-sunxi needs new members to continue as a community and you
have been repeatedly seen driving people off.

While your arguments might be technically correct you fail to deliver
them politely, or even acceptably in many cases.

>
> All we ever see you do is trash me. You have written no code, you have
> not contributed to the wiki, you only now spend some time on irc to try

> to clean up your image. You started calling for banishing me, while

> trying to instigate a fork, almost as soon as you got here. And you try
> to post about every little positive thing that allwinner does (while
> allwinner ignores its hard legal responsibilities), to try to take
> credit for them and to try artificially gain any form of standing here.
>

> Perhaps you and Allwinner do not realize this. But linux-sunxi does not
> need Allwinner, Allwinner needs linux-sunxi. What linux-sunxi requires

Yeah, sure.

It's true that allwinner has used the work done by sunxi community in
the past for their business. And it has provided some code and
documentetion.

And it has not provided some other code and other documentation which
the sunxi community needs to continue the same work.

But there is no hard requirement for allwinner to cooperate with
linux-sunxi. They can hire a developer to do the work, they can just
live with their Chinese SDKs or they can go out of business, whatever.

> from Allwinner is a legal matter, and a pretty open and shut case at
> that. Allwinner trying to make their mole a part of this community this
> crudely or artificially, while so badly messing up the basics, that is
> not only counterproductive, it is quite preposterous.
>

> Stop trying to hollow out Allwinners hard legal requirements.

Sure, allwinner is required, legally, to release some sources. And it
might have signed some NDAs to not release them so it may as much
legally be obliged to not release the same sources. It might in fact
have put itself into a situation when it is not allowed to ship a
product with this software, legally.

However, the copyright of the ffmpeg authors or Linux authors is
somewhat theoretical in China while the NDA they signed with the
business next door is much less.

And as has been pointed out the situation can be 'corrected' by
releasing modularized sources with the blobs as properly separated
modules without providing anything useful to linux-sunxi at all.

So dwelling on this point is in all ways quite useless. Even though
they have shipped the SDKs with intermixed binaries and are
technically required to produce sources for those.

The only really useful thing that can happen is cooperation and that
will not happen with badmouthing allwinner all the time.

If you shout that they have to release sources loud enough that they
notice they will show you the Chinese smiley face and say they will
release them.

And since they said so they will. It does not say anything about the
usefulness of the release, however.

So, please, try to limit the corrosive and bitter posts.

Thanks

Michal

On Friday, March 6, 2015 at 5:42:22 AM UTC+10, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> Sure, allwinner is required, legally, to release some sources. And it
> might have signed some NDAs to not release them so it may as much
> legally be obliged to not release the same sources. It might in fact
> have put itself into a situation when it is not allowed to ship a
> product with this software, legally.
>
> However, the copyright of the ffmpeg authors or Linux authors is
> somewhat theoretical in China while the NDA they signed with the
> business next door is much less.
>
 

Michal this logic is wrong.   Customs I was referring is China own customs.
http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/tackling-intellectual-property-infringement-in-china/
You will find customs as one of the methods to enforce against intellectual property infringement this includes copyright infringement.


1/2 a million routers were crushed by China customs when a company refused to release firmware source code as required and their website blocked by the great china firewall.  The GUY next door with the NDA over Allwinner is not going to help Allwinner when the products are crushed and Allwinner web site is blocked from the outside world by the great china firewall.

FOSS enforcement only seams theoretical in China because FOSS does not do it often.  Also normally when FOSS enforcement does happen to Chinese companies they mostly go out of business.

The router vendor tired that Chinese smiley face method as well.

Allwinner need to make up its mind either it only sells inside china or it want to sell to the world.   If it wants to sell to the world software infringement is not on.

Also remember github is USA so anything infringing hosted on github can be  removed by DCMA orders.   Due to this infringement being found the source code need to be mirror to a country where copyright cannot be enforced until its fixed.   In fact to remain legally clear it should be removed from github by them until its fixed.

This is the multi country legal problem.

> And as has been pointed out the situation can be 'corrected' by
> releasing modularized sources with the blobs as properly separated
> modules without providing anything useful to linux-sunxi at all.

Other than the fact it legally should not be on github in it current state and can be removed at any time due to the fault by a DCMA order.  So the benefit it gives linux-sunxi is legal right to use more hosting.

Please note China customs the person who can place complain is a FOSS developer or one of their competitors.   This is why this is so serous the FOSS developer may do nothing against Allwinner but one of Allwinner competitors take this information to put them out of business.

Peter Dolding

Just look at today's news...

Statement in support of Software Freedom Conservancy and Christoph Hellwig, GPL enforcement lawsuit

On Thursday, March 5, 2015, Christoph Hellwig, with support from the Software Freedom Conservancy, filed suit in Hamburg, Germany against VMware Global, Inc. Hellwig is a prominent contributor to the kernel Linux, releasing his contributions under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. VMware, like everyone, is free to use, modify, and distribute such software under the GPL, so long as they make available the human-readable source code corresponding to their version of the software when they distribute it.

This simple and fair obligation is the cornerstone of the successful cooperation we've seen for decades between organizations both for-profit and non-profit, users, and developers—the same cooperation which has given us the GNU/Linux operating system and inspired a wealth of free software programs for nearly every imaginable use.

Unfortunately, VMware has broken this promise by not releasing the source code for the version of the operating system kernel they distribute with their ESXi software. Now, after many years of trying to work with VMware amicably, the Software Freedom Conservancy and Hellwig have sought the help of German courts to resolve the matter. While the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is not directly involved in the suit, we support the effort.

"From our conversations with the Software Freedom Conservancy, I know that they have been completely reasonable in their expectations with VMware and have taken all appropriate steps to address this failure before resorting to the courts. Their motivation is to stand up for the rights of computer users and developers worldwide, the very same rights VMware has enjoyed as a distributor of GPL-covered software. The point of the GPL is that nobody can claim those rights and then kick away the ladder to prevent others from also receiving them. We hope VMware will step up and do the right thing," said John Sullivan, FSF's executive director.

The suit and preceding GPL compliance process undertaken by Conservancy mirror the work that the FSF does in its own Licensing and Compliance Lab. Both the FSF and Conservancy take a fair, non-profit approach to GPL enforcement, favoring education and collaboration as a means of helping others properly distribute free software. Lawsuits are always a last resort.

You can support Conservancy's work on this case by making a donation.

Media Contact

John Sullivan
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
lice...@fsf.org

Read this online: https://www.fsf.org/news/conservancy-and-christoph-hellwig-gpl-enforcement-lawsuit

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 19:56:53 -0800 (PST)
oia...@gmail.com wrote:

> I think we need to bring this back to simple.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. But first of all, please start
playing by the rules yourself. This is a technical mailing used by
free software developers. And the subscribers are expected to
respect "Proper conduct", as explained in the linux-sunxi wiki:
    http://linux-sunxi.org/Mailing_list

Which means making sure that you don't violate:
    http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php

And in particular, the "Make sure your lines are no longer than 72 to
76 characters in length" rule.

 
> 1) as FOSS not out to harm allwinnertech all FOSS want is
> conformance with license.
>
> Reality here the two worst laws to break as a hardware vendor
> is copyright and trademark.   Serous-ally.   Both you can enforce by
> customs both can cause product destruction.   This is pure nightmare
> because what would happen if a developer of the work decided to take
> the customs path a stack of product for one of allwinner customers
> would get to the board be ruled as contain copyright infringing work
> then crushed.   This has happened to gameconsoles and other items in
> the past.   The buyer is left out of pocket.
>
> Its basically a common mistake since FOSS does not act often that
> it does not have teeth.   The reality most FOSS developers know they
> have the teeth to put a company out of business so try negotiation.
>
> https://libav.org/shame.html  you will notice all the ones here are
> fairly much software companies.  Developers don't have very effective
> teeth to go after software companies.  Also remember even if the
> infringement is preformed by a sub-company the fact its on your device
> can make that device destroyable and you will be expected to get the
> compensation out the sub company that provided you with the infringing
> software.

As a matter of fact, Allwinner does not make devices. It makes chips.

It is the Allwinner's customers who are making devices. And the unique
situation with (at least older) Allwinner based devices is that these
devices can be running 100% free software. Very few other hardware
vendors are able to match this level of freedom (even Intel based
devices are typically shipping with proprietary BIOS firmware).

And by the way, I'm not sure if you paid attention to the discussion in
this thread, but there is also a reverse engineered hardware video
decoder implementation available, which is 100% free software. This
means that you don't really need to use any blobs from Allwinner to
play your video.

And to complement the perfect software freedom, some of the device
manufacturers are even making open source hardware (if you have
ever heard about this concept). For example, you can check

    https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware

> The reality is you are better to break patent law than trademark or
> copyright as hardware company.
>
> Something Allwinner take on board is release the source after the
> fact is an extremely bad idea.   If you go to Intel and Amd you will
> notice they release the open source code before the chip ship.   This
> means the chips cannot be destroyed at customs.

The SoC chips obviously do not contain the kernel code or userland
software.

> You are only able to catch up with the source release after the
> fact because at this stage the FOSS developers are being kind.

Look, you have blatantly violated the netiquette rules in this
mailing list. And now you are only able to catch up with the rules
after the fact. The ignorant people like you can only get away with
their misconduct because the free software developers here are being
kind. Just be grateful that nobody suggests to get you banned yet.

> Siarhei Siamashka the case of the firmware not using the Linux
> kernel firmware loader what promises that we will not have that happen
> again.  Is there staff training to make sure this does not happen
> again.

How can we be sure that your violation of the netiquette rules will
not happen again?

> Siarhei Siamashka there are compliance tools.
> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/compliance/tools
> Are you using them.  If not please start using them.   If you are
> using them please open bug reports for the cases that these issues
> got missed.

Are you now telling me to do your homework? But this is not how free
software development works. Don't just come here with a consumer
attitude. We (free software developers) owe you nothing. Please start
using these tools yourself and submit issues at github if you are
really interested in improving Allwinner's licenses compliance. Thanks
in advance for your cooperation.

> http://www.binaryanalysis.org/en/home
>
> This tool is built particularly to allow FOSS developers to
> locate infringement in closed source binaries. Basically FOSS
> developers have tools to find infringement and they have made the
> tools for your side to detect infringement before it gets out the
> door.   Please allwinner stop messing with them because when they do
> decide to hit it is going to hurt.   I like your chips don't want to
> have the case that I have ordered something only to find its been
> crushed because you were infringing.
>
> Basically due to the tools it would have taken Luc Verhaegen bugger
> all effort to find the issue.   Since it takes bugger all effort why
> did not the allwinner staff locate it.   Maybe they are not tooled up
> correctly and maybe this is the cause of all the on going issues.
>
> If you can prove a fault with the FOSS compliance tool that it failed
> to detect it at least you have workable excuse and evidence that you
> attempted to be conforming but this still does not help you if
> developer has chosen to go the customs path to copyright
> enforcement.  
>
> The best option is do not infringe and if you do don't just play it
> down have some decent explanation in a form of an operational failure
> of something or someone at least then the FOSS developers finding the
> problems walk way kind of ok and are unlikely to take it further.

Yes, I believe that everyone sincerely wants to do the right thing.
However you, for example, are not familiar with the netiquette rules,
because they are probably not something that is common in your
environment. And in a similar way, Allwinner is probably not very
familiar with software licenses too (but I don't want to be making
any statements on their behalf). The point is that people do make
mistakes sometimes. But much more important is what efforts are
made to fix these mistakes whenever they happen.

Now going back to the current situation with Allwinner and the
software support. Previously the SDK had been only provided to the
device manufacturers (probably under NDA). Parts of these SDK releases
sometimes got leaked to the public, but Allwinner never officially
distributed them to the end users and instead delegated this
responsibility to the device manufacturers. In a way, this was a
legal loophole.

I should also mention the reason why we have a nearly perfect free
software support for the A10/A13/A20 SoC variants now. A major role
in this had been played by Tom Cubie, who used to be an Allwinner
employee at that time. Tom actively communicated with the community,
was available on the IRC channel and also helped to get proper GPL
license notices and Allwinner copyrights added the leaked SDK sources,
effectively making them legal to use by the free software community.
Also, if I remember correctly, the kernel binary blobs used on A10
were open sourced too. That was a perfect example of proper
cooperation. Later Tom Cubie left Allwinner to create his own
company, which produced excellent Cubieboard development boards
and further contributed to the popularity of A10/A20 chips.

But after Tom Cubie left Allwinner, their cooperation with the
linux-sunxi community gradually went downhill. It reached the
lowest point right after Allwinner had joined Linaro, when all
the contacts seemed to get abruptly cut off and Allwinner seemed
to have stopped responding to the e-mails from some linux-sunxi
community members. The exact role of Linaro and what do they
actually bring to the table still remains unclear.

However recently Allwinner has created a project at github with
the documentation releases:
    https://github.com/allwinner-zh/
And also apparently hired David Lanzendörfer to take care of the
communication with the linux-sunxi community:
    https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-sunxi@googlegroups.com/msg10021.html
I don't know if David Lanzendörfer can really replace Tom Cubie
and do the same (or better) job, but this looks like a positive
change overall and I can only welcome it.

Also Allwinner has recently started releasing the kernel, bootloader
and some other software to the same project at github. Yes, they are
making some mistakes in the process of doing this, but they are
also responding to the requests in the issue tracker and trying to
resolve them. Surely this looks a bit awkward and the licenses
compliance could have been handled better by avoiding some basic
mistakes. As the others have already mentioned in this discussion
thread, the most interesting question is why Linaro is not supervising
this process? Wasn't Linaro supposed to improve the Allwinner's open
source situation (and is probably even getting paid for that)?

Hi,

On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 20:41:36 +0100 Michal Suchanek <hram...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On 5 March 2015 at 18:35, Henrik Nordström
> <hen...@henriknordstrom.net> wrote:
> > ons 2015-03-04 klockan 17:41 +0000 skrev Manuel Braga:
> >
> >> What we get? Just indifference that the reverse engineering effort
> >> even exists.
> >
> > Sorry you get this impression.

Who is not guilt, don't raise the hand.

Just that this video engine has been so problematic not only for me
and the others involved, but also for all sunxi "community".

> >
> > I know I have been silent, but that's mostly because video is not
> > something I am interested in, and especially not Allwinners binary
> > take on it. But it does not mean that I am indifferent to your
> > effort, not at all, to me the documentation of the CedarX hardware
> > and proof of concept software was and is very important, even if
> > far from feature complete.
> >
>
> It WorksForMe(tm). I can play video with mplayer which is how I use
> video most of the time even on systems with multiple choices of a
> media player. And with opensource drivers which I can expect to
> continue working as long as sunxi hardware has any use. Thanks for
> that.
>
> Yes, it is a gross hack. But for more progress the other parts to
> which the VE engine is to be hooked have to be ready - like the KMS
> driver. Technically one can be writing a VE driver without a KMS
> driver which is then just plugged in ... and you can see all the bugs
> then.

The video engine is the least priority item in the wish list, but is
dependent of all the others. I understand that, and also don't see a
point of wasting time in a 100% open source driver and software for it,
if the only way to use it requires hardware that is limited by binaries
blobs (for example; dram initialization). This is not me going for a
full 100% or nothing, just a question of priorities.

Did you every see me asking for KMS(or whatever name) driver? You don't
because i never asked. Why? Because i don't need to ask.





> ...

>
> So, please, try to limit the corrosive and bitter posts.
>

And again the discussing went the same path.

I like that there are harsh agents, it make the ones that see this
"community" as a source of gratis labor think two times. It makes me
fell that i am not been abused, and different personalties make the
world colorful. But just a personal opinion.


Wouldn't be better to talk instead of fighting.

Because the way that you (all) are responding to the harshness
looks like fighting to me, and again the fighting is obscuring the
problem that is the reason of the harshness in the first place.

Why not say, "Luc, last commit demonstrated that allwinner is clueless
in how to fix this license issues, please stop the stick waving."

And this mistakes that allwinner is doing by trying to fix this license
issues, is more of a concern (in $business$ matters) than being public
shamed about license noncompliance.


Anyway today there are good news in the allwinner git repository.

--
Manuel Braga

fre 2015-03-06 klockan 18:28 +0800 skrev Quink:
> cedarx2.0 is a refactoring of cedarx1.0. The job is finished about
> just
> three month ago and not used by most vendors yet. Some work is still
> needed
> to port cedarx2.0 to linux. The directory of cedarx2.0 in Android SDK
> is
> frameworks/av/media/liballwinner. The directory of cedarx1.0 in
> Android SDK
> is frameworks/av/media/CedarX-Projects. Most part of cedarx2.0 is open
> source. It's not the same situation compared with cedarx1.0. Maybe it
> is not
> a big step and not enough, it is a right direction.

The latest cedarx code released by Allwinner is still non-GPL in the
important parts, and no indications that this will change any time soon.
Yes they have released much of the glue layers with GPL license, but the
actual video encoding/decoding parts is till in a binary library which
is incompatible with the GPL license terms.

For open and Linux desktop portable drivers then please take a close
look at the Cedrus open driver developed outside of Allwinner:

        http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus

Please note that the security concerns mentioned in this project also
applies to Allwinners code as it stems from the Allwinner kernel API and
hardware capabilities, not the Cedrus code.

Regards
Henrik

fre 2015-03-06 klockan 19:44 +0000 skrev Manuel Braga:

> The video engine is the least priority item in the wish list, but is
> dependent of all the others. I understand that, and also don't see a
> point of wasting time in a 100% open source driver and software for it,
> if the only way to use it requires hardware that is limited by binaries
> blobs (for example; dram initialization). This is not me going for a
> full 100% or nothing, just a question of priorities.

A10, A13, A20 have full open source system code for a long long time,
and these days even integrated in mainline u-boot & kernel, including
initialization from bare metal. Full DRAM setup etc.

And now DRAM setup code and more for the whole range of SoCs have
suddently been released as open source by Allwinner which removes a
large part of the burden of getting the other SoCs supported at system
level. The SoC user guides have also improved by far compared to the
early A10 user guides we got access to years ago, plus are now
officially published and not just randomly leaked.

If you look at the openness then VPU and GPU is the most sore parts in
the Allwinner SoCs at the moment. Not so much because they depend on
everything else but because everything about them is closed down tightly
by Allwinner. There is also some issues in display interfacing where
there is relations to third party interest organisations and content
protection.

Please ignore what is in the Allwinner SDK releases and focus on what is
available in open versions or documented. The silly fact that some later
SDK releases have closed down some things which was open before do not
make the already openly published versions closed, or that support for
those have been dropped by linux-sunxi community kernel.

Regards
Henrik

Just to make it clear, we are talking about the LGPL license here, not
GPL. This makes a rather major difference regarding the compliance
requirements.

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 12:32 AM, Henrik Nordström
<hen...@henriknordstrom.net> wrote:
> fre 2015-03-06 klockan 18:28 +0800 skrev Quink:
>> cedarx2.0 is a refactoring of cedarx1.0. The job is finished about
>> just
>> three month ago and not used by most vendors yet. Some work is still
>> needed
>> to port cedarx2.0 to linux. The directory of cedarx2.0 in Android SDK
>> is
>> frameworks/av/media/liballwinner. The directory of cedarx1.0 in
>> Android SDK
>> is frameworks/av/media/CedarX-Projects. Most part of cedarx2.0 is open
>> source. It's not the same situation compared with cedarx1.0. Maybe it
>> is not
>> a big step and not enough, it is a right direction.
>
> The latest cedarx code released by Allwinner is still non-GPL in the
> important parts, and no indications that this will change any time soon.
> Yes they have released much of the glue layers with GPL license, but the
> actual video encoding/decoding parts is till in a binary library which
> is incompatible with the GPL license terms.
>

As an interim solution for the repo at
https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec
(with the aim to keep the glue code as LGPL while the .so libraries as
closed-source),
would it make sense to split the repository into two parts?

That is, have a https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec-lib
repository that will contain
the two .so closed-source libraries.
Then, the https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec repository will
include the "media-codec-lib"
as a 'git submodule'.

Simos

Siarhei Siamashka sorry for the direct email instead of
into list I hit enter at the wrong time. Before I had
all selected.

On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Siarhei Siamashka
<siarhei....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 19:56:53 -0800 (PST)
> oia...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I think we need to bring this back to simple.
>
> Thanks for sharing your opinion. But first of all, please start
> playing by the rules yourself. This is a technical mailing used by
> free software developers. And the subscribers are expected to
> respect "Proper conduct", as explained in the linux-sunxi wiki:
>     http://linux-sunxi.org/Mailing_list
>
> Which means making sure that you don't violate:
>     http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php
>
> And in particular, the "Make sure your lines are no longer than 72 to
> 76 characters in length" rule.

Most of the mailing lists I post to have autowrap this one does not
so I am sorry..

I posted by google groups I was not aware the mailing list lacked
that.
Note I really don't care cases of proprietary.   I just care about
compliance.

Its customers making the devices and customers receiving devices
that end up on the major receiving end of enforcement.

If it done right everything is good.

>
>> Siarhei Siamashka there are compliance tools.
>> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/legal/compliance/tools
>> Are you using them.  If not please start using them.   If you are
>> using them please open bug reports for the cases that these issues
>> got missed.
>
> Are you now telling me to do your homework? But this is not how free
> software development works. Don't just come here with a consumer
> attitude. We (free software developers) owe you nothing. Please start
> using these tools yourself and submit issues at github if you are
> really interested in improving Allwinner's licenses compliance. Thanks
> in advance for your cooperation.

Sorry from a legal point of view author of the code don't have to submit
an issue to github instead they should be recommended to submit a
DCMA takedown notice as this is the correct policy as per github..

https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy/

Please note "E. Repeated Infringement" in the github rules.

Yes repeat infringer of copyright loss the right to host on github.

> However recently Allwinner has created a project at github with
> the documentation releases:
>     https://github.com/allwinner-zh/
> And also apparently hired David Lanzendörfer to take care of the
> communication with the linux-sunxi community:
>     https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-sunxi@googlegroups.com/msg10021.html
> I don't know if David Lanzendörfer can really replace Tom Cubie
> and do the same (or better) job, but this looks like a positive
> change overall and I can only welcome it.
>
> Also Allwinner has recently started releasing the kernel, bootloader
> and some other software to the same project at github. Yes, they are
> making some mistakes in the process of doing this, but they are
> also responding to the requests in the issue tracker and trying to
> resolve them. Surely this looks a bit awkward and the licenses
> compliance could have been handled better by avoiding some basic
> mistakes. As the others have already mentioned in this discussion
> thread, the most interesting question is why Linaro is not supervising
> this process? Wasn't Linaro supposed to improve the Allwinner's open
> source situation (and is probably even getting paid for that)?
>

Siarhei Siamashka think of this if they don't improve their processes
we will lose https://github.com/allwinner-zh/ because infringement is not
allowed on github.   If there is any question about stuff being ready.
Allwinner really need to place it on a china server first.  Then I can run
compliance tools and send them messages.

The problem here is also the recommendation to just submit issue.

If you are a author of the code you are not meant to submit
issue tracker by github rules but instead DCMA submit takedown
notices.

Github will also take offence at copyright infrignment reports being
in the issues sections of github as evidence of repeat offending.


Yes I know they are making mistake.   The problem I have is where
they are making mistakes.   Github is not a place to make mistakes
over copyright.


https://help.github.com/articles/guide-to-submitting-a-dmca-takedown-notice/
"Ask Nicely First. A great first step before sending us a takedown
 notice is to try contacting the user directly. They may have listed
 contact information on their public profile page or in the repository's
 README, or you could get in touch by opening an issue or pull request
 on the repository. This is not strictly required, but it is classy."

Reality there needs to be a email address for copyright faults.

Next note the last sentence.
"This is not strictly required, but it is classy"

Obey github rules emailing or opening a issue is optional.

From the same page notice this.
"Include the following statement: "I have a good faith belief that
 use of the copyrighted materials described above on the infringing
 web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, or its agent,
 or the law."

DMCA allows anyone to submit a takedown notice as long as it
correct.

Yes complaints are meant use copy...@github.com after legal advice
.if you no longer have faith that it will be fixed or you believe its
going to be
ongoing problem.

Be warned as well Software Freedom Conservancy will provide free
legal advance when doing a DCMA takedown notice.

Cost to person submitting a DCMA takedown notice is nothing more than time.

Siarhei Siamashka I am not trying to be mean.  The problem is this is
a very deep legal hole with nasty long term side effects.

Completely drop the point of view that people need to find copyright
problems and report them to the project.   The project needs to be
copyright clean on everything they submit to github to protect their
github account.

Basically we need to fix this issue before allwinner gets bitten.

One of the advantage of git is the means to host on many servers.

Allwinner need to serous-ally consider hosting on their own server for
early release not fully audited stuff.  China as far as I know does not
have a DCMA take down equal.

Siarhei Siamashka I will say I made a mistake I thought you were one
of the ones in charge.   Basically we need to get a message to
David Lanzendörfer as priority 1.   Because this simply copyright
infringement issues cannot keep on happening on github it will
bite badly sooner or latter.



Peter Dolding

Even if people ignore the terms of the LGPL, like you clearly do, there
are still LGPLed symbols present in that binary.

I suggest that you start by reading up on the GPL and LGPL licenses.

Luc Verhaegen.

On 03/16/15 14:52, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
>
> Even if people ignore the terms of the LGPL, like you clearly do, there
> are still LGPLed symbols present in that binary.
>
> I suggest that you start by reading up on the GPL and LGPL licenses.
>
> Luc Verhaegen.
>

i think he already has:
https://github.com/simos/keyboardlayouteditor/blob/master/COPYING

--
simon

Simon Kenyon
e: simonc...@gmail.com
m: +353 86 240 0005
l: http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/simon-kenyon/0/6b2/744/
s: simonckenyon
t: @simonckenyon
g: google.com/+SimonKenyon

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 03:16:47PM +0000, Simon Kenyon wrote:
> On 03/16/15 14:52, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
>>
>> Even if people ignore the terms of the LGPL, like you clearly do, there
>> are still LGPLed symbols present in that binary.
>>
>> I suggest that you start by reading up on the GPL and LGPL licenses.
>>
>> Luc Verhaegen.
>>
> i think he already has:  
> https://github.com/simos/keyboardlayouteditor/blob/master/COPYING
>

His statements suggest that he just pro-forma copied that.

Luc Verhaegen.