Xorg copyright infrigement

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 12:28:46PM +0200, Mateusz Jończyk wrote:
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> Hello,
> 
> W dniu 27.04.2014 11:33, Luc Verhaegen pisze:

> Right, I should have CC You. Please excuse me. I am new to this project.

Has nothing to do with a given project, it's just common sense.

> Yep, that would be probably lost and forgotten.

Heh. At least 3 major copies are out there, and not only was the mit 
license preserved, the comments about the origins were preserved as 
well. This code has been passed through many a hand already.

> Somebody simply noticed the fact of possible copyright problems here.

So you, and you alone, have read the description of the origin of this 
information then?

> I don't have any doubts that the Authors of the XLS would agree to inclusion of its
> derivative works in XOrg and other programs.
> Until that happens, however, we cannot rely on it.

Really? It's only been 8 years.

> We could just rewrite it using the Chinese wall principle:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

*yawn*

Now...

vesa.org was distributing this xls file as: 
http://www.vesa.org/Public/CVT/CVTd6r1.xls Namely, under a www reachable 
directory called "Public".

Here is a nice little write-up on what vesa's free standards entail:
http://www.vesa.org/vesa-standards/free-standards/

"They include Net2Display Remoting, Access Bus, CVT Spreadsheet, DCM, 
DMS59, DPVL, DSTP, EDID Extensions, EDID Implementation Guides, E-EDID 
EEPROM, GTF Help Files, M1, MCCS Updates, MultiDisplay, Multiple 
Projector Common Data Interchange (MPCDI), NAVI, All Panel Standards, 
PnP, PSWG 15 and 17 inch, SMT, Stereo, and VBE."

>From that blurp, it seems like the cvt spreadsheet _is_ the actual vesa 
standard, and that it once was openly distributed, and now is hidden 
behind a form which demands contact information.

I am not a lawyer, and a full minute on wikipedia doesn't seem to give 
me a clear set of guidelines of what is "public domain". But it is very 
clear that neither VESA or Graham Loveridge were in any way interested 
in claiming copyright on this spreadsheet document.

If this would satisfy your sense of self-importance, then the comments 
describing the origin of the information could be clarified by stating 
"This is a direct C implementation of the vesa standard, which was 
distributed as an XLS." instead of mentioning the author of the XLS and 
all the other stuff.

If not, good luck with your "cleanroom reverse engineering", which will 
amount to nothing else but rewriting the comments and very awkward and
deliberate hiding of the origin of the information, for which it is a 
bit very very very late.

Luc Verhaegen.