New subject: Splash Issue #2

23 Nov 2004

...
  From: Refaz Anam [mailto:refazanam@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 &lt;gvg(a)reactos.com&gt; 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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FW: Ekush / ReactOS