[ros-general] FW: Ekush / ReactOS

[Ge van Geldorp]

> From: Refaz Anam [mailto:refazanam at yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 06:34
> To: Ge van Geldorp
> Subject: Re: Ekush / ReactOS
> 
> 
> Dear Ge van Geldorf,
>  
> Thank you very much for asking the clarification. I know, 
> still so many questions are there and need to be answered 
> accordingly. But before proceed I need to introduce myself.  
>  
> I'm a 40 years old attorney and completed my final education 
> in UK. I'm looking after the Lianasoft Foundation, a 
> non-profit organization and eventually the solicitor from 
> Project 21 side. But I'll try to answer to your questions in 
> normal way and not as a lawyer. :) 
> I involved to the Project 21 just from few months back. 
> Pleaese forgive me if I made wrong answers to the technical 
> questions as I'm not a technical person.
>  
> Anyway.............
>  
> -------------
> Your account of the events after the Ekush release somewhat 
> conflicts with my memories of those events. Also, you make it 
> sound like it was impossible to publish the source because of 
> technical reasons. However, in EPC/doc/Readme.rtf (part of 
> the binary package released last week) the following 
> statement was made:
>  
> "Q. You guys says "Project published under the GPL" but why 
> don't you published sources? A. Initially we decided that, 
> EKUSH should be published under the GPL. But, still there is 
> some confusion within the team. We are now sharing sources 
> between team members only and unless the confusion goes 
> removed we cannot publish sources"
> -------------
> 
>  
> You are right. 
> Actually, the main problem comes from a few percentage of 
> non-GPL compatible code, some of them are propitery or some 
> are not compatible with GPL policy. But basically those 
> sources came from some other projects and not coded/written 
> by our devs. I personally was afraid to publish these sources 
> publicly without owners written permission. And due to the 
> fact, team was confused to publish the source tree. But 
> Geldorf, I can assure you more than 100% about its 
> cleanliness and there is NO LEAKED SOURCES FROM WINDOWS/WINDOWS 2000.
>  
> Sorry Geldorf, I cannot write more for now as I'm going to 
> outside and will be back tomorrow. I'll come with more 
> clarifications when back. 
>  
> Thanks and regards,
>  
>  
> Refaz Anam
> Lianasoft Foundation
> 
> 
> Ge van Geldorp <gvg at reactos.com> wrote:
> Dear Mr. Anam,
> 
> I've read your announcement that appeared on 
> http://www.ekush.com and on the ReactOS forum at 
> http://www.reactos.com/en/content/view/full/7336. First of 
> all, let me say I'm happy that you've decided to respect the 
> GPL by publishing your source along with the binaries.
> 
> The relationship between Ekush and ReactOS has had a very bad 
> start. Personally, I'm willing to forget about this and make 
> a fresh start. This would require honest and open 
> communication from now on. Unfortunately, I have doubts about 
> some of the statements in your announcement, specifically:
> 
> "Initial release of Ekush (binary) recently has been 
> published to the Akshor.com and available for download and 
> also started uploading weekly binary snapshot. But it was 
> impossible to make the source downloadable because of the 
> limited bandwidth issue. Site exceeds its maximum bandwidth 
> within 3/4 days after the binary made downloadable; a few GB 
> bandwidth has been increased but reached again to its maximum 
> limit within another 2/3 days and gone down permanently."
> 
> Your account of the events after the Ekush release somewhat 
> conflicts with my memories of those events. Also, you make it 
> sound like it was impossible to publish the source because of 
> technical reasons. However, in EPC/doc/Readme.rtf (part of 
> the binary package released last week) the following 
> statement was made:
> 
> "Q. You guys says "Project published under the GPL" but why 
> don't you published sources? A. Initially we decided that, 
> EKUSH should be published under the GPL. But, still there is 
> some confusion within the team. We are now sharing sources 
> between team members only and unless the confusion goes 
> removed we cannot publish sources"
> 
> This doesn't sound like a techical issue but a deliberate 
> decision by the Ekush team. Again, I'm willing to forget this 
> decision and leave it behind us, but the fact that you seem 
> to distort the truth in your recent announcement worries me.
> 
> As some people on the ReactOS mailing list have noted, we 
> need to be sure none of the leaked Microsoft Windows 2000 
> source makes its way into our code. Since we cannot compare 
> submitted code against the leaked source (that would mean 
> looking at the leaked source ourselves, which would "taint" 
> us) there has to be a level of trust towards the people who 
> submit code. I have to say, so far Ekush has done little to 
> earn that trust.
> 
> Just for the record, I'm just one of the developers of 
> ReactOS. I don't (and
> can't) speak for the other developers, or for the project as a whole.
> 
> Best regards, Ge van Geldorp.
> 
> 
> 		
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