Comment by pygar
5 years ago
This is a fork of MenuetOS [0]. The author of MenuetOS (Ville M. Turjanmaa) does not appear thrilled about the fork and has put the 64bit version under a proprietary license [1].
This is not criticism, just a statement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS [1] http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?p=216272#216272
> Well, they took the code and in a couple of weeks also added their own copyrights to the beginning of all kernel files, booting, multitasking, GUI, networking, drivers, all. I'm not planning to find out if it would happen again.
> Currently Menuet is the only OS written 100% in assembly with modern feature-set and it took us some time to realize this goal. This is also an easily identifiable place in the computing world.
> And like always, if somebody wants to be part of Menuet development, then just send me a message.
According to KolibriOS' site the fork happened in 2004 so it isn't like some recent move where they got the source, added the copyright and then presented everything as own work. This is mentioned in the first page of the site too.
So they released the code open source and then were mad about someone using the source?
Depending on the license (caveat: I've not checked) the issue isn't the source being used it is the apparent attempt to claim copyright of the code the fourth is derived from (slapping their copyright messages in, with little/no indication that their contribution is only a small part of the work).
Even if the original license doesn't block this, it is still a bit of a dick move IMO.
Based on a face-value reading of the text above, it paints it as copyright violation.
That doesn't imply it's [entirely] true, but it certainly warrants some analysis. It's not clear what exactly happened without digging. As of today, one of the core files (`kernel.asm`[¹]) is clear about licensing, but the history may have been "not straightforward".
¹=http://websvn.kolibrios.org/filedetails.php?repname=Kolibri+...