Kano vs Bitsyncom

[kjj]

If they didn't like the conditions, they didn't have to use any of it.  Not releasing their changes is just shitting on the community, and as I mentioned before, pointless.

That would only be true if Avalon said they will not release source code; but they have always maintained that they will release source code.  At least that's what I was told.

Based on that, the only question is the date of release, and by extension, the patience level of forum posters

They were in violation of international copyright treaties the moment they shipped.  The GPL doesn't say that you must intend in the future to release the source code, it says that the physical product must be accompanied by either the source code or a written offer to provide the source code.

By default, there is no right of distribution.  They only way to get that right is through a license.  The GPL provides an automatic license to people that comply with the terms described.  Failure to comply with those terms = copyright violation and termination of license.  Section 8 provides ways to restore the license, but it does not excuse a violation and does not give a grace period during which violations are acceptable.

At any rate, I don't really care much about violations.  I had two points, the first being that 2112's notion that the GPL is an evil thing, strangling poor projects in their crib is nonsense, and the second that there was not, is not, and never will be, a good reason for Avalon to have failed to provide the software alongside the physical product.

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[2112]

If they didn't like the conditions, they didn't have to use any of it.  Not releasing their changes is just shitting on the community, and as I mentioned before, pointless.

That would only be true if Avalon said they will not release source code; but they have always maintained that they will release source code.  At least that's what I was told.

Based on that, the only question is the date of release, and by extension, the patience level of forum posters

They were in violation of international copyright treaties the moment they shipped.  The GPL doesn't say that you must intend in the future to release the source code, it says that the physical product must be accompanied by either the source code or a written offer to provide the source code.

By default, there is no right of distribution.  They only way to get that right is through a license.  The GPL provides an automatic license to people that comply with the terms described.  Failure to comply with those terms = copyright violation and termination of license.  Section 8 provides ways to restore the license, but it does not excuse a violation and does not give a grace period during which violations are acceptable.

At any rate, I don't really care much about violations.  I had two points, the first being that 2112's notion that the GPL is an evil thing, strangling poor projects in their crib is nonsense, and the second that there was not, is not, and never will be, a good reason for Avalon to have failed to provide the software alongside the physical product.

Again, I'm just quoting for future reference because this board allows ulimited message editing/deletion.

This is an example of how defense of international software copyright treaties kills competition in hardware business preventing the startups from recouping the NRE costs.

The biggest enemy of Bitcoin aren't banksters or whatever else powers-that-be. The enemies are the hormone-laden cholerics that simply cannot think on the horizon longer than a month or (rarely) year.

[kjj]

I understand that Avalon simply had no time to develop a proper firmware layer to isolate themselves from the results of adverse disclosure. They may be just another project snuffed by the situation where GPLv3 turns virulent and kills the host.

Bullshit.  There are no secrets here.  SHA is totally known.  Bitcoin mining is totally known.  USB is totally known.  There is absolutely fucking nothing in an Avalon unit to be protected by secrecy.  The hard part here is actually making the damn chip, not the LOL-programming they use in the FPGA that manages them.

Moreover, your notion of GPL "turning virulent" and killing the host is bullshit too.  If they didn't like the conditions, they didn't have to use any of it.  Not releasing their changes is just shitting on the community, and as I mentioned before, pointless.

I'm just quoting for posterity. This is a perfect example of a supporter that is worse than an enemy. Not understanding hardware is not a problem. Not understanding hardware and pretending to understand it is the most serious problem: for example the overclockability curve can be used to estimate manuafacturing yields.

Involvement of the people like kjj is the reason why so many hardware-related open source projects fail: they inadvertently disclose all the competitive information because they simply don't understand the manufacturing technology and planning: front-loaded NRE costs rule. The competition can run circles around them: a knowledgeable competitor using proper analytics would know more about their manufacturing than the ostensible project managers do.

This isn't a software business with no barrier to entry and where the costs are back-end loaded: mostly in the maintenance. Even if you don't understand this now, just copy this and paste it somewhere for the future reference. There is also a lot of similar discussion from they days where various people from around Linux Torvalds discussed merits and demerits of various licenses. In Bitcoin you have all that distilled to just a handfull of projects.

Oh dear god, not the manufacturing yield!  Anything but the manufacturing yield!

Seriously dude, get a grip.  The mining programs already spew FPGA bitstreams as opaque blobs provided by the manufacturer.  If the Avalon is using an FPGA for management, that blob is either on a ROM chip on the board, or in the filesystem of the control board.  No one cares.  What we do care about is knowing what they did to cgminer (GPL!) so that it could talk to the management module.  Plenty of us want to throw out the crappy wifi router they are using and connect our units, when we get them, into our existing infrastructure.

If there are big secrets in the patches they made to cgminer, then they fail because now that they have distributed it, they are required to disclose those changes.  If they didn't like that, they should not have used that software.

[kjj]

If they didn't like the conditions, they didn't have to use any of it.  Not releasing their changes is just shitting on the community, and as I mentioned before, pointless.

That would only be true if Avalon said they will not release source code; but they have always maintained that they will release source code.  At least that's what I was told.

Based on that, the only question is the date of release, and by extension, the patience level of forum posters

They were in violation of international copyright treaties the moment they shipped.  The GPL doesn't say that you must intend in the future to release the source code, it says that the physical product must be accompanied by either the source code or a written offer to provide the source code.

By default, there is no right of distribution.  They only way to get that right is through a license.  The GPL provides an automatic license to people that comply with the terms described.  Failure to comply with those terms = copyright violation and termination of license.  Section 8 provides ways to restore the license, but it does not excuse a violation and does not give a grace period during which violations are acceptable.

At any rate, I don't really care much about violations.  I had two points, the first being that 2112's notion that the GPL is an evil thing, strangling poor projects in their crib is nonsense, and the second that there was not, is not, and never will be, a good reason for Avalon to have failed to provide the software alongside the physical product.

Again, I'm just quoting for future reference because this board allows ulimited message editing/deletion.

This is an example of how defense of international software copyright treaties kills competition in hardware business preventing the startups from recouping the NRE costs.

The biggest enemy of Bitcoin aren't banksters or whatever else powers-that-be. The enemies are the hormone-laden cholerics that simply cannot think on the horizon longer than a month or (rarely) year.

Why would I edit or delete my posts?  You are the insane one here, not me.  Heh, ok, calling you insane might be a bit over the top, so I may edit that to a nicer term later.

They used software that requires disclosure of changes.  No one forced them to use it.  They made the decision voluntarily.  They had the right to write their own software and keep it secret.  Hell, if they really wanted to, they could have tracked down all of the authors and negotiated a different license for the same software.

I'm no fan of copyright as applied to non-commercial distribution, or even merely copying, for that matter, but it is the world we live in.  And in this world, I support the rights of authors to game the system to preserve freedom, and I care a hell a lot more about that than I do about "competition in hardware business".  You are the one with the short thinking horizon here, not me.  You seem to care more about next year's products than about the next generation's freedom.

I think I've clarified my position on this sufficiently now.  The products/freedom issue is what divides the open source people from the Free Software people, and I think it should be plenty obvious which side both of us are on.

[2112]

Why would I edit or delete my posts?  You are the insane one here, not me.  Heh, ok, calling you insane might be a bit over the top, so I may edit that to a nicer term later.

They used software that requires disclosure of changes.  No one forced them to use it.  They made the decision voluntarily.  They had the right to write their own software and keep it secret.  Hell, if they really wanted to, they could have tracked down all of the authors and negotiated a different license for the same software.

I'm no fan of copyright as applied to non-commercial distribution, or even merely copying, for that matter, but it is the world we live in.  And in this world, I support the rights of authors to game the system to preserve freedom, and I care a hell a lot more about that than I do about "competition in hardware business".  You are the one with the short thinking horizon here, not me.  You seem to care more about next year's products than about the next generation's freedom.

I think I've clarified my position on this sufficiently now.  The products/freedom issue is what divides the open source people from the Free Software people, and I think it should be plenty obvious which side both of us are on.

Click & snap again.

I mean kjj is kinda lost-cause here, he isn't even aware that he's at a poker table and laying your cards for all to see is not a winning strategy. But I know that this board is read by many young people who are capable of learning.

Hardware development is like a poker: you keep your cards close to the chest, maybe drop some and add some, place your bets and wait for the showdown. If you show your cards to other players before showdown you are going to lose (or at least you aren't going to win anything). And if you lose all your stake you will not be allowed to sit at any table. If you wont be able to front the money for the cheapest table you'll be just a beggar waiting for handouts from the real players at the casino's entrance.

I'm not sure how much TSMC values the non-disclosure about the manufacturing node that Avalon used. But before they had their chips manufactured by TSMC they had to sign something about obeying reasonable care to avoid disclosing TSMC-proprietary and whoever-else-proprietary information. SHA-2 is an example of a self-testing structure, something akin to the test structures used in the manufacturing process testing and calibration.

When Avalon is going to disclose their voltage regulator and clock synthesizer programming information it will allow competent people to obtain very detailed information about TSMC process used. I don't think that theres much commercial value in that, but it is the intentions that count. Avalon signed not to disclose, but allowed disclosure through carelessness. TSMC aren't going to be thrilled about it and will drive harder bargain when Avalon tries to order the 2nd batch. I'm not expecting somebody from Chronicle Technology open the account to post "Thanks, suckers.", but maybe some of the Avalon competitors will do that.

So Avalon is now in between the hammer of GPLv3 and the anvil of NDA with TSMC.

This concludes this my short lecture. If you plan to ever in your life play in the high-stakes game of hardware development: learn the rules. Otherwise you'll be forever fighting over the table scraps and leftovers: like Raspberry Pi where Broadcom/Alphamosaic Videocore GPU boots and controls the ARM CPU sandbox to let the kids play with their open cards poker game.

[Evan]

Kano, you forgot to cite the hole in his code that steals 1/100000 hashs and sends it to his account so he can steal the equivalence of bit penny.....  Open Source or None at all

[eldentyrell]

You are pissed off because we haven't got around to release source code yet or the fact we did not giving you a free unit?

before kano began his transparent quest for free hardware.

I too have been really irritated by kano and his "I'm entitled to free stuff" attitude.

But it goes beyond mere irritation; when he doesn't get free stuff he actually makes up false accusations in order to get attention.  For example, he made the absurd claim that the TML host software was derived from cgminer.  Of course this is ridiculous, and all of the source code for the TML host software is publicly available, every single line of it.  And it's written in a completely different language for crying out loud.

I still haven't gotten an apology from him.

[kano]

You are pissed off because we haven't got around to release source code yet or the fact we did not giving you a free unit?

I too have been really irritated by kano and his "I'm entitled to free stuff" attitude.

But it goes beyond mere irritation; when he doesn't get free stuff he actually makes up false accusations in order to get attention.  For example, he made the absurd claim that the TML host software was derived from cgminer.  Of course this is ridiculous, and all of the source code for the TML host software is publicly available, every single line of it.  And it's written in a completely different language for crying out loud.

I still haven't gotten an apology from him.

Coz you are making an absurd claim that is false.

[Luke-Jr]

But it goes beyond mere irritation; when he doesn't get free stuff he actually makes up false accusations in order to get attention.

Wow, phrased this way it sounds an awful lot like ckolivas too.

[nbtcminer]

Kano, you forgot to cite the hole in his code that steals 1/100000 hashs and sends it to his account so he can steal the equivalence of bit penny.....  Open Source or None at all

... No FUD please.

[Monster Tent]

Avalon customer service now brought to you by Inaba.

[Unacceptable]

Avalon customer service now brought to you by Inaba.

At least Inaba posts SOMETHING    Even if it's a troll feed or delay 

I haven't heard about a tracking # or shipping update from Avalon for a few weeks now 

[The-Real-Link]

2112's post sounded awfully cryptic but I suppose that's why companies strongly protect their trade, production, etc., and have lawyers.

Well, aside from all the FUD in this thread, it just sounds like Avalon has to do the right thing(s); that's up to them and no one else.  Hope it helps making mine with their units better.

[Syke]

They were in violation of international copyright treaties the moment they shipped.  The GPL doesn't say that you must intend in the future to release the source code, it says that the physical product must be accompanied by either the source code or a written offer to provide the source code.

By default, there is no right of distribution.  They only way to get that right is through a license.  The GPL provides an automatic license to people that comply with the terms described.  Failure to comply with those terms = copyright violation and termination of license.  Section 8 provides ways to restore the license, but it does not excuse a violation and does not give a grace period during which violations are acceptable.

At any rate, I don't really care much about violations.  I had two points, the first being that 2112's notion that the GPL is an evil thing, strangling poor projects in their crib is nonsense, and the second that there was not, is not, and never will be, a good reason for Avalon to have failed to provide the software alongside the physical product.

This is an example of how defense of international software copyright treaties kills competition in hardware business preventing the startups from recouping the NRE costs.

The biggest enemy of Bitcoin aren't banksters or whatever else powers-that-be. The enemies are the hormone-laden cholerics that simply cannot think on the horizon longer than a month or (rarely) year.

Are you actually complaining about the GPL license? kjj is absolutely correct. Avalon took GPL source, modified it, and failed to offer the source. That is a violation, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if they promised to release it later. It doesn't matter if they are giving up trade secrets to release it. If they don't like the terms of the GPL, they shouldn't have used GPL source. But they did use GPL source, and they have violated the license.

[Vicus]

Are you actually complaining about the GPL license? kjj is absolutely correct. Avalon took GPL source, modified it, and failed to offer the source. That is a violation, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if they promised to release it later. It doesn't matter if they are giving up trade secrets to release it. If they don't like the terms of the GPL, they shouldn't have used GPL source. But they did use GPL source, and they have violated the license.

bla-bla-bla
In Russia we have good proverb for that situation: "The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on".

[Raoul Duke]

Are you actually complaining about the GPL license? kjj is absolutely correct. Avalon took GPL source, modified it, and failed to offer the source. That is a violation, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if they promised to release it later. It doesn't matter if they are giving up trade secrets to release it. If they don't like the terms of the GPL, they shouldn't have used GPL source. But they did use GPL source, and they have violated the license.

bla-bla-bla
In Russia we have good proverb for that situation: "The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on".

Not only in Russia. In Portugal we also have that proverb, literally.

[2112]

Are you actually complaining about the GPL license? kjj is absolutely correct. Avalon took GPL source, modified it, and failed to offer the source. That is a violation, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if they promised to release it later. It doesn't matter if they are giving up trade secrets to release it. If they don't like the terms of the GPL, they shouldn't have used GPL source. But they did use GPL source, and they have violated the license.

What I'm pointing out is that kjj is preaching from the Free Software Foundation bible in the church of Hardware.

The actions that make sense in software business are frequently suicidal in the hardware business. This is because of the cost structure: hardware is mostly front-end-loaded, whereas software is mostly back-end-loaded.

Yes, Avalon made a mistake by using a code requiring GPLv3 compliance. They should've designed a separation layer like many hardware vendors that support Linux. But the Avalon team is young and inexperienced and they didn't design for that.

My position is that rational supporters of Bitcoin would attempt to come up with some middle-of-the-road solution to safeguard the existence of viable competition of multiple vendors in the Bitcoin ASIC business. What I see is almost exact opposite: they are asking Avalon to nearly commit suicide for the sake of an ilusory freedom. Ilusory, because for the gain of few pages of source the whole Bitcoin ecosystem is paying the price of severely disadvantaging one of the ASIC vendors, to the point that in the next iteration we could have a monopoly.

The rational behaviour would be probably along several possible lines:

a) disclose the code only to Jeff Garzik. He's professionally involved in Linux kernel development and may be able to offer some useful advice on how to both comply with GPLv3 and TSMC/whoever-else NDAs.

b) offer to escrow the code with Bitcoin Foundation and have a programmer at B.F. to produce an obfuscated code that complies both with GPLv3 and NDAs. There are already multiple precedents in escrowing the information with Gavin Andresen, but thus far the escrow was security-related.

c) I personally think that the "binary blob" workaround isn't viable here for purely technical reasons. But I may be wrong. Maybe somebody willing and able to sign the NDA could help Avalon to develop such a solution.

d) take a chill pill and make Avalon folks pinky swar that they disclose the required information after the competition shipped and after the subsequent batches are locked in with TSMC.

But this thread isn't about being rational. It is about militancy, a very short-sighted militancy of playing open-face chinese-rules poker at the traditional-rules poker table.

Think for a moment: What would Richard Stallman do if he had a single tapeout to his name before he received his MacArthur Fellowship? We wouldn't have a Free Software Foundation. We would have maybe a Free Logic Foundation or Free Computation Foundation or something else. But I believe that we would be better off: maybe we could have open-source processors and disk drives in our open-source computers.

[Vicus]

In Soviet Russia, ASIC mines you!
(Sorry, couldn't help myself with the family guy reference)

I expected this would be first reply... Missed, it was second  

[2112]

IMHO the best proverb to describe this thread is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face

[kano]

IMHO the best proverb to describe this thread is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face

No, this thread is about the GPL license requirements of cgminer.
It's not about some random person (you) idea about how that fits in with their thoughts on GPL and hardware.

GitSyncom has stated (for the 3rd time ... this time with a date that either just expired or is yet another week away) that they will release the source.

The issue why I brought this argument up was actually mainly due to the bogus excuse as to why they hadn't yet released it.
They supposedly completed 2 Avalon's on the 20th of Jan that contain the results of all of their different source code.
They have supposedly since then been making 12 Avalon a day (each with binaries made from that source code) and yet the bogus excuse was that they needed to remove something from it before they could release it.
Of course there are 2 issues: 1) They can't do that with cgminer and keep to the required licence 2) If they are referring to the non-cgminer code, then well that just means they've now made and shipped over 200 Avalons that have this so called problematic debugging code that is required to be removed - unless the "12 Avalons a day" was bogus.

I can tell you up front:
The cgminer code will be using the FPGA serial-USB library.
The cgminer code will have modified the scanhash is some manner to acquire ~24 work items at a time (instead of 1) coz the Avalon requires a group of items sent to it at a time ... no big deal ... and it's not ground breaking coz it's not even a queue as per discussion about improving performance.
Neither of those are any sort of advancement on cgminer, the first is something I've been removing from cgminer, the 2nd is something that is being developed properly now for the BFL SC's if they appear soon and use it in an optimal way ... as a queue.
The other changes they may have made in cgminer will not be ground breaking in any manner or form.
i.e. there really is no excuse to not have already released the cgminer code by a company who promotes themselves as Open Source to the Bitcoin community.
The results of that are that if anyone else does get an Avalon (which is still questionable more than 3 weeks after they shipped the first one) they are unable to deal with any cgminer problems themselves - and also an already known memory problem cannot be implemented by anyone who gets an Avalon, until the source code is released, without having to reinvent the code (which would also normally be done if any of the devs actually had the hardware ... though I'll be the one to help Xiangfu to do that ... if he does get an Avalon)