[legal] eligibility for contributing code to wine for students / graduates of a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Acadamic Program
If a student is currently taking, or has previously taken a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Academic Program
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowsacademic/default.mspx
which contains the curriculum resource kit, Windows Research Kernel (containing Windows XP x64 amd Server 2003 SP1 kernel sources) and Project OZ,
will they become *ineligible* to contribute code to the wine project in the future?
Thanks!
Mark
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Mark Farnell mark.farnell@gmail.com wrote:
If a student is currently taking, or has previously taken a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Academic Program
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowsacademic/default.mspx
which contains the curriculum resource kit, Windows Research Kernel (containing Windows XP x64 amd Server 2003 SP1 kernel sources) and Project OZ,
will they become *ineligible* to contribute code to the wine project in the future?
Yes, forever seems to be the curse you are stuck with. So goes what I have heard over the years. Its a bummer too as I know a number of people this affects. This question gets asked more and more these days and we don't seem to have a clear answer for when if ever your taint will wear off. You might want to ask the Samba project how they feel about this and also check with the Software Freedom Law Center. I am curious what they say.
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Steven Edwards winehacker@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Mark Farnell mark.farnell@gmail.com wrote:
If a student is currently taking, or has previously taken a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Academic Program
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowsacademic/default.mspx
which contains the curriculum resource kit, Windows Research Kernel (containing Windows XP x64 amd Server 2003 SP1 kernel sources) and Project OZ,
will they become *ineligible* to contribute code to the wine project in the future?
Yes, forever seems to be the curse you are stuck with. So goes what I have heard over the years. Its a bummer too as I know a number of people this affects. This question gets asked more and more these days and we don't seem to have a clear answer for when if ever your taint will wear off. You might want to ask the Samba project how they feel about this and also check with the Software Freedom Law Center. I am curious what they say.
They can also read the NDA I'm sure they had to sign before participating in the program.
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 8:57 PM, James Hawkins truiken@gmail.com wrote:
They can also read the NDA I'm sure they had to sign before participating in the program.
There is no NDA as far as I am aware. The license restrictions are that you can't copy and paste anything but your free to take what learn. They want to spawn a whole generation of Windows Kernel developers that know the internals of the OS so they can write device drivers and the like and supplant using Linux/Unix as a learning tool in the university.
"You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information."
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensing/basics/wrklicense....
Steven Edwards wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 8:57 PM, James Hawkins truiken@gmail.com wrote:
They can also read the NDA I'm sure they had to sign before participating in the program.
There is no NDA as far as I am aware. The license restrictions are that you can't copy and paste anything but your free to take what learn. They want to spawn a whole generation of Windows Kernel developers that know the internals of the OS so they can write device drivers and the like and supplant using Linux/Unix as a learning tool in the university.
"You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information."
That's about as simple as it gets. They cannot contribute to Wine without breaking this.
James McKenzie
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 7:33 AM, James McKenzie jjmckenzie51@sprintpcs.com wrote:
"You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information."
That's about as simple as it gets. They cannot contribute to Wine without breaking this. James McKenzie
I don't follow. No one that contributes to Wine has a license for Microsoft Copyright or patent. IANAL but It seems to me that it means something like the following in layman's terms.
You can use whatever you remember afterward, but you can't copy and paste source code, and accepting this license or remembering something from it does not exempt you from patent litigation. (which no one is exempt from anyway)
I'll email Microsoft licensing for clarification, but again it seems pretty cut and dry to me. What part is not clear?
2008/6/14 Steven Edwards winehacker@gmail.com:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Mark Farnell mark.farnell@gmail.com wrote:
If a student is currently taking, or has previously taken a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Academic Program ... will they become *ineligible* to contribute code to the wine project in the future?
Yes, forever seems to be the curse you are stuck with. So goes what I have heard over the years. Its a bummer too as I know a number of people this affects. This question gets asked more and more these days and we don't seem to have a clear answer for when if ever your taint will wear off. You might want to ask the Samba project how they feel about this and also check with the Software Freedom Law Center. I am curious what they say.
IANAL, but the sources are for the kernel only. This does not include the UI and other DLLs built on top of the kernel. If we know what DLLs the sources correspond to, shouldn't the students be restricted to not contributing to those DLLs only (just like if you use Visual Studio you can't contribute to the ATL or the C/C++ runtime libraries)?
Also, this shouldn't prevent those people contributing to the Wine tests.
Am I correct in this, or does the taint impact all of Wine?
We also need a position on .NET participation, because I believe that the sources come with the MSDN version of Visual Studio 2008. I don't know how far that goes as I only have upto 2005.
- Reece
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 5:13 AM, Reece Dunn msclrhd@googlemail.com wrote:
IANAL, but the sources are for the kernel only. This does not include the UI and other DLLs built on top of the kernel. If we know what DLLs the sources correspond to, shouldn't the students be restricted to not contributing to those DLLs only (just like if you use Visual Studio you can't contribute to the ATL or the C/C++ runtime libraries)?
Also, this shouldn't prevent those people contributing to the Wine tests.
This is the way I feel it should be done, with some sort of reasonable timeframe but Its up to Alexandre or the SFLC to decide. I mean Wine is 15 years old, lets assume it lives another 15 years, is someone that has a license at the university now, unable to write ntoskrnl 15 years from now. Hell even Linus had a copy of the Lyons book that contained a rip off of Unix sources...
Am I correct in this, or does the taint impact all of Wine?
Its up to Alexandre and the SFLC to clear this issue up. Its starting to get raised often enough that I think clarification is warranted.
Hi,
IANAL, but the sources are for the kernel only. This does not include the UI and other DLLs built on top of the kernel. If we know what DLLs the sources correspond to, shouldn't the students be restricted to not contributing to those DLLs only (just like if you use Visual Studio you can't contribute to the ATL or the C/C++ runtime libraries)?
I believe that we shouldn't go this far: "if you use Visual Studio you can't contribute to the ATL or the C/C++ runtime libraries"
Visual Studio is an IDE, compiler and documentation suite. If you use Visual Studio, you will not see any source code, unless you install it, and look at it at your own will.
We also need a position on .NET participation, because I believe that the sources come with the MSDN version of Visual Studio 2008. I don't know how far that goes as I only have upto 2005.
.NET Framework source code is not included in Visual Studio but Visual Studio can download it.
Source of information: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/rscc.mspx
Visual Studio is a development platform rather than a source code collection.
I see banning people from contributing to Wine being only one step from banning people from contributing to Wine who use Microsoft Windows.
I hope this is not the "official" point of view.
Kornél
"Mark Farnell" mark.farnell@gmail.com wrote:
If a student is currently taking, or has previously taken a course derived from the Microsoft Windows Academic Program
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowsacademic/default.mspx
which contains the curriculum resource kit, Windows Research Kernel (containing Windows XP x64 amd Server 2003 SP1 kernel sources) and Project OZ,
will they become *ineligible* to contribute code to the wine project in the future?
According to Windows Research Kernel (WRK) description at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/windowsacademic/researchkern...
The WRK includes the source for: Processes Threads LPC Virtual memory Scheduler Object manager I/O manager Synchronization Worker threads Kernel heap manager Other core Windows (NTOS) kernel functionality
So, to me it looks like anything outside of ntdll/kernel32/wineserver (excluding user32 backend) has no any relation to WRK.
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Dmitry Timoshkov -
James Hawkins -
James McKenzie -
Kornél Pál -
Mark Farnell -
Reece Dunn -
Steven Edwards