[ros-general] FW: Ekush / ReactOS

[Ge van Geldorp]

>   From: Refaz Anam [mailto:[e-mail]]
>  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(a)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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