Bitcoin Forum

Hi, in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5151878.0

the last undeleted reply appears to be a license violation of cgminer - and it's been merited by a mod

So I replied with the quote below, which a mod has deleted twice then locked the thread.

I'm not sure if it is frodcooper who deleted it twice and locked the thread, but he merited the last post

Seriously? Not allowing me to reply to that post with a request for the source code ... since his statement is false about his GPL violation ...

Efudd has an official thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5036968.0) for that firmware that is not self-moderated. Take your complaints there.

Then his post shouldn't be there either ...

I think the Mod's job is to "enforce" the "rules" of the forum, which means even if a scammer starts a topic admitting that he is a scammer the mod's "can't" delete that post unless it's off-topic or violating the forum rules,  let alone stealing/reselling a piece of code.

As far as i am concern non of the rules (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0) states that license violations are not allowed.

There was a similar issue with blissz's firmware where he decided to comply with GPL license and stopped selling his modified version of Cgminer, his thread is still there, it has been there for ages and nothing has been done about it, so I am not sure why do you expect this one to be different.

I am not supporting the act of using the work of other people , modify it and then sell it as your own , but these people know in advance that they are paying for something that is made of an open source but with modifications that they think are "worthy" of the money they pay for it.

Lulz - none of the forum rules say I can't send a hitman to visit you either ...
But I (probably) wouldn't even if you do support people breaking the license of the software that I am the 2nd largest contributor to ...

I guess you have no idea about what is involved in the GPL license ... coz anyone can sell a firmware, but the license requires them to provide the source code to anyone they sell (or give) it to, upon request.

No doubt you, like many of the forum, don't care about licenses and pirating, but alas I will bring it up anyway when it's relevant ...

I don't see mikey supporting license violations. Saying that some people do it doesn't mean support. Mods deleting off topic posts doesn't mean they support a specific agenda.

You might want to post a trust rating for efudd and perhaps start a proper scam accusation thread since you seem to have a strong case.

It's not a scam, it's a license violation.

I post about them often, but in this case a mod deleted my posts.

Thus the post here ... as theymos requested me to.

The person didn't directly steal your money but it sounds similar to a contract violation, an attempt to use your work without fulfilling their end of the "deal".

To me it would seem like a possible case for a red trust rating. That's why I suggested to start an accusation thread and see if the community agrees. A red trust label could be more effective than trying to post a rebuttal everywhere where that person posts.

Well I have already posted in his thread ... so I guess I'll see if he responds correctly first ...

Edit:
But that's not the issue I've raised, the issue is my posts being deleted, and the thread locked by a mod,
for replying to his post, that is not edited or deleted.
... yes the bitcoin mining subsection of the forum is HEAVILY edited by frodocooper - just check most current threads and see how many posts he's edited ...

I don't go scouring the forum for cgminer license violations, in fact I completely avoid the altcoin section of the forum due to my opinion that they are all scams and I seriously want to have nothing to do with altcoins.

(few people seem to understand how much of a scam most altcoins are ... heh a good example is that Charlie Lee started Litecoin as a scam ... )

But if they show up in the Bitcoin-Mining section I'll usually respond, and have never had my such posted deleted before nor had the thread locked to stop me from replying - all done by a mod ... and I wonder who it was when the same post that was making a clear violation of the license was merited by a mod :P

Oh please Kano , is this accurate or you just got carried away?
 ;D


If by "your" you mean Kano then that is wrong, only Jeff Garzik can call this "his idea".

But still nobody is actually stealing anything from Kano or anybody else, all what those guys are doing is simply not complying with the GPL license,  but then again that is more  moral than legal hence ( open source ).

---

This is not a clear violation as kano tries to make it seem, there is a lot of other factors involved if you are intrested read the thread where all of this started.

Anyhow back to why the mod deleted his post, it was off-topic , this topic is going no where, but what do i know  ::)

LOL she said "your work" which is correct.

I've never said cgminer or the original cpu miner was my "original" idea.
There are many changes in cgminer that are my idea.
But I TOO must abide by the GPLv3 license of cgminer ... ... ...

Trying to modify the meaning of something obvious that has been typed doesn't bode well for trying to make a case.

No, it's legal - go read up about licenses and the law ...
If all the developers of cgminer wanted to give the rights of cgminer to the Free Software Foundation, then the FSF would actually take violators to court ...

Unless he supplies the source code, it is a violation.
You 'clearly' don't know what you are talking about ...

There's no worming around it pretending he hasn't changed the cgminer code, coz he's stated in his own thread (that I quoted) that he has.
The master cgminer does NOT have #xnsub in it since it is a major security issue.

Not much.
As I've stated, I replied to his post, as I have done MANY times before to others who have posted about their firmware, but this time there are extra circumstances, where a mod has merited the post that clearly shows he has violated the license, then deleted my post requesting he not violate it.
In fact, as can easily be seen, the post I replied to was a reply to my post ... which was a reply to his earlier post ... etc.

Then hire a lawyer, the forum won't do that for you


He is a mod, not a judge , that post had a lot of good points that deserve the merit, i see nothing wrong with it.
 
.

It does not matter how you look at it, it was off topic, anybody will see the same thing, just because other posts were not deleted does not mean yours should stay.

I am not denying that your concern is valid, it indeed is,however that topic was not the right place for you and efudd to discuss GPL license , you should either discuss it in his firmware topic or start your own topic, you should also understand that the forum is not obligated to protect "your work" or enforce the GPL rules.

Your post about Z9 firmware was off-topic in a thread about someone's problem with an M3.

Arguably the top part of efudd's last post can be considered off-topic too but he did also add a direct response to the OP's problem.

Sending merits shouldn't be viewed as an endorsement.

It would be best to have the license discussion in a thread dedicated to the issue.

kano,

cgminer is used as-is from bitmain, with no changes of my own. the closest equivalent that I could find and used as a *reference* is https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer-dash. To be clear, I do not modify the cgminer in the .tar.gz and it is used as-is from bitmain.

#xnsub support is something *bitmain* claims to have fixed in the release that 2.3 is based off of, simple as that.The "#xnsub properly supported" comment that caught your attention is *marketing*. I have not claimed to have added/coded it in any manner. The wording has been quite precise there in everything I have responded/posted/commented.  (In hindsight, they failed, there is an on-going escalation between NH and Bitmain CxOs with bitmain releasing an updated firmware for the Z11 in private to a user about 36 hours ago).

Loader is simply: https://github.com/kubo/injector - which is a combination of licenses, the relevant one being LGPL 2.1 which really just ensures threads I have written start up.

(This next paragraph is a lot more information than I desire to give up regarding implementation, so I would appreciate it if it was not quoted so I could "...snip..." it out in a later edit... but you have to do you.)
Anything else that is being used is MIT/non-licensed and communications between my stuff and cgminer is honest-to-god using API calls and by proxy is not in violation. Anything else that it does beyond calling cgminer-api, is implemented by talking directly to the hardware, bypassing cgminer. I have reverse engineered the communications to the PIC and simply poke the hardware the right way to get it to do what I want it to do (frequency, voltage, blahblah). I literally fopen() and talk to the fpga mapped memory space.

As a little background, my day job sometimes involves insuring that proprietary code and GPL(+variants) do not intermix. I am not completely clueless when it comes to isolating GPL/non-GPL, and while it is possible I have got something wrong in my isolation between distinct processes (fork/exec of GPL does not make the caller GPLed), I'm pretty darned confident I have not. I put quite a lot of effort into isolation.

Outside of the day job, I've been on both sides of this discussion and have actually encouraged/enforced the release of other projects that were being used/distributed in violation of the GPL.

You are the first person to ask for source, which has greatly surprised me, to be honest.

I have no beef with you, the GPL, etc. and am trying to convey the compliance here and I will be happy to discuss this with you through a medium of your choosing.

To those who merit'd, please feel free to remove as you see fit. I assumed the merit was based on an offer to help a user who has been infected with a malware, to be honest.

Thank you,

Jason

As I've stated in your thread and as you clearly seem to imply you already know ... yet you have also ignored the requirements ...


Your reply claiming that some bitmain git 'may' have it means nothing.

Sigh.

Again:

https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer-dash
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/

I can't have a conversation with an unreasonable individual.

-j

I can have a discussion with someone who thinks they can avoid a license violation by pretending they know nothing about, yet that they also claim they spend a lot of effort at in their job.

https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer-dash/commits/master

States the last update was almost 2 years ago, so no that is not relevant to you distributing it without the ability to supply or point to the correct source code.

I will state this one more time: I have made *zero* changes to cgminer. Go pull down 0423 bitmain, 2.3 for mine, compare. They are the same. If you have a beef with beyond that with the correct source code, I recommend speaking with bitmain as I have provided links to the content I have used in development. Bitmain content is shipped without any listed licenses, also.

That -DASH code was used as a reference when reverse engineering the hardware. I am not sure why you are stating that I am "[avoiding] a license violation by pretending they know nothing about", either.

-j

theymos responds to valid DMCA takedowns.

Sigh.
Where's the source code for the cgminer you distribute? ... ...
Which is what I asked at the very start of this and yet you keep pretending you can avoid it ...

What users have received from bitmain does not have any license or source associated with it.
Given your concern, I have raised the issue with Bitmain via a trouble ticket to request information on the license and source. I will share the answer provided.

-j

Calling all CGminer contributors.

Contact @offordscott in Telegram to express your interest in suing CGminer GPLv3 copyright violators in order to set a precedence in USA.

Speak to the main cgminer dev ck - he's the one with tens of millions of dollars in BTC, made mostly from cgminer, that can afford to do this sorta stuff.

From what I understand, CK doesn’t want to make the time for this type of stuff.

For some back story: https://web.archive.org/save/https://asicseer.com/page/offord-cease-and-desist

And: t.me/firmwars

UPDATE April 20, 2020:

The original Telegram group has been purchased by Alex Levin for $1000 from the original owner. I was only an "admin" in the group, thus lost control when Levin was made the new owner. Levin banned me from the group so, I've started a new group:

https://t.me/firmwarz

I've made hardly any money out of cgminer development (though I am the 2nd most prolific developer of the cgminer code)
That's not a complaint, it's just a fact. It's also opensource software, so it's not really unexpected either.
So I'm certainly not spending any money on dealing with the license which will give me no return at all, just a loss.

I post in the Bitcoin part of the forum on occastion if I see a violation of the cgminer license.
Even one of the mods here - frodocooper - seems to get pissed off about me justifiably requesting the simplest requirement of the license, the source code from anyone who distributes cgminer.
Oh well, he is what he is ... ...

Anyway, this forum, and bitcoin in general, is full of people who think they are lawyers yet do not know the law, as well as people who think they are coders, but really have no idea how to do that properly either.
Even ck himself falls into that second category :P

But anyway, the firmware distributions on this forum are ripe with people who are both of the above and also violating the cgminer license.
My action is to, as I've said, point them out on occasion if I happen to see them.

As far as I understand, the altcoin section of this forum is rampant with this, but since I'm not interest in being involved in any altcoins, since they all at least start as scams, I'm certainly not gonna get involved in that either.
The one time recently where I did post in the altcoin rotten hole of thievery, my post was deleted, which is what this thread was about ... :P

Oh also, there's the 3rd most prolific cgminer development guy who has hundreds of millions of dollars in BTC - go ask him then :)
"Luke"

Bitmain doesn't care they will say no it's not and close ticket... Been down that road

Alex Levin, of ASICseer, got upset when I said the following in a public Telegram chat:


James showed the group the following:


Then Alex said:


Then, I saw this the next day:

https://asicseer.com/page/offord-cease-and-desist

It's a standard cease and desist request.

Anyone can pretend they will take legal action which they can not do or will not win.
They don't even need a lawyer to send you one :P

If you have any useful legal contact or useful legal representation they will have already told you this, and that you can ignore it :P

PS there's a bunch of other quite obvious strings in cgminer that I put there that you can see in the original code :)
... and of course you could just decompile it and you'd get something similar to the source at the time they copied the git.

Anyway, as I said above, not interested, I'm not throwing money at something that will just lose me money, I'm not a bitcoin millionaire :P
Also, there is one you can't win against: Bitmain for a specific reason you probably already realise if you do have any useful legal advise ...

Edit: I know who James is and use to chat with him a lot (even ... yesterday :) )