Summary of Claymore's miner infringing on mrb's SILENTARMY miner MIT license

[mrb]

Let this thread serve as a public record to show that Claymore and I resolved this licensing issue. It is no longer a problem.


Some people ran "strings" on Claymore's Zcash binary and saw function names and variables that matched my SILENTARMY miner: https://forum.z.cash/t/silentarmy-v3-now-a-full-miner-multi-gpu-stratum/3580/629

I confirmed Claymore copied my code beyond doubt: https://forum.z.cash/t/silentarmy-v3-now-a-full-miner-multi-gpu-stratum/3580/641

Because SILENTARMY is released under the MIT license, Claymore was obligated to include my copyright notice, but he failed to do so. So I privately asked him to do so in a private message:

Claymore, you took and reused my blake.c code and didn't include the copyright notice as required by silentarmy's MIT license:
https://forum.z.cash/t/silentarmy-v3-now-a-full-miner-multi-gpu-stratum/3580/640

I request that you cease infringing by:
(1) either including the full "License" section of silentarmy's README.md along with your distribution of your zcash miner,
(2) or stop using my blake.c code.

Of course this is only ~100 lines of code, and we are all lazy programmers and I understand why you did it Smiley but you ought to do the right thing.

Thanks,
-Marc Bevand

However some users were very bothered by this because Claymore charges a 2.5% "dev fee" in his miner, so they took the issue publicly in his Zcash miner thread. He replied a few hours later, publicly in his miner thread, admitting fault and looking for a resolution:

I had to remove v1.0 and v1.1 from google drive and mega, because I was pointed that I used a small part of mrb's work.
It will take up to 24 hours to revise my code and create own implementation, then I will upload updated version.

Details are:
[mrb's message]

Oh, you are correct, I really missed this point. I was in a big hurry to release first version asap, so I concentrated on main Wagner's algo,
blake is not interesting for me at this point since it takes only 10% of total GPU time and it's trivial in fact, blake algo is not that I can call something new.
But to make some start point asap I included your blake.c into my sources and then forgot about it and did not create my implementation. That's what happens if you are in a hurry.
It is very unpleasant situation for me, I will do the following:

1. I remove v1.0 and v1.1 versions of my miner. In fact, I already removed current packages from google drive and MEGA, I will upload updated versions soon.
In next version I will remove your blake.c from my sources.
2. I apologize, it's only my fault that I used this part of your code. I was not going to do it in public version.
3. I want to send you some compensation from my ZEC dev fee if you don't mind, just send me your ZEC address.
4. I'm not going to hide my fault in any way, I will post this message in my miner thread in first post.

He first withdrew his package from the Internet, then later re-added them with his readme file updated to include the license:

FILES UPDATED TO INCLUDE MIT LICENSE DETAILS IN README.
People started asking me about miner package in PM and some people started to share alternate links for downloading, it's not a good thing because of possible viruses.
So according MIT license I added notice to README and uploaded updated miner packages back to original links. You can also see a license notice in original post of this thread.

I verified that he added the copyright notice and license as required by the MIT license:

I had to remove v1.0 and v1.1 from google drive and mega, because I was pointed that I used a small part of mrb's work.
It will take up to 24 hours to revise my code and create own implementation, then I will upload updated version.

Details are:

Code:

mrb> Claymore, you took and reused my blake.c code and didn't include the copyright notice as required by silentarmy's MIT license:
mrb> https://forum.z.cash/t/silentarmy-v3-now-a-full-miner-multi-gpu-stratum/3580/640
mrb> I request that you cease infringing by:
mrb> (1) either including the full "License" section of silentarmy's README.md along with your distribution of your zcash miner,
mrb> (2) or stop using my blake.c code.
mrb>
mrb> Of course this is only ~100 lines of code, and we are all lazy programmers and I understand why you did it :) but you ought to do the right thing.
mrb> Thanks,
mrb> -Marc Bevand
[/quote]

Oh, you are correct, I really missed this point. I was in a big hurry to release first version asap, so I concentrated on main Wagner's algo, 
blake is not interesting for me at this point since it takes only 10% of total GPU time and it's trivial in fact, blake algo is not that I can call something new. 
But to make some start point asap I included your blake.c into my sources and then forgot about it and did not create my implementation. That's what happens if you are in a hurry. 
It is very unpleasant situation for me, I will do the following:

1. I remove v1.0 and v1.1 versions of my miner. In fact, I already removed current packages from google drive and MEGA, I will upload updated versions soon. 
In next version I will remove your blake.c from my sources.
2. I apologize, it's only my fault that I used this part of your code. I was not going to do it in public version.
3. I want to send you some compensation from my ZEC dev fee if you don't mind, just send me your ZEC address.
4. I'm not going to hide my fault in any way, I will post this message in my miner thread in first post.

Thank you for doing the right thing. I fetched your new tarball Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner v1.1 Beta - LINUX - Catalyst 15.12.tar.gz and can confirm you included the MIT license as mandated in your "Readme!!!.txt" file, as quoted below.

You are in no way obligated to "pay" me. But if you feel this can help re-establish some of your image and reputation, feel free to publicly send to my donation address t1cVviFvgJinQ4w3C2m2CfRxgP5DnHYaoFC

You are now fully compliant with the MIT license. I hope my SILENTARMY code was useful to you 

Code:

==========
This miner uses some code of SILENTARMY OpenCL GPU Zcash Equihash solver:

# License

The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Marc Bevand

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

-Marc Bevand

So the issue is now all resolved.

[nrg_wolf]

and do you get daily cuts of his dev fee? seems unfair if you dont.

[Chance567]

and do you get daily cuts of his dev fee? seems unfair if you dont.

You might need to read the MIT license a bit.

"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions..."

If he tried to force a payout on the grounds of the MIT license, it would invalidate the license itself due to the above clause. Honestly, considering the above clause, I'm not even sure why this situation escalated to the point it did. The condition for that clause is simply that the author is credited. Once done, it's free to use/copy/reverse engineer and rebuild. A name wasn't dropped where it should have been, and suddenly the world is on fire. I'm all for credit where it's due, but this is some grade-school chest-beating we're seeing here.

Edited for clarity on the condition of the clause.

[mrb]

and do you get daily cuts of his dev fee? seems unfair if you dont.

Well it's the intent of my choice of the MIT license. I want to allow such uses, at the condition my copyright notice is included.

[joblo]

and do you get daily cuts of his dev fee? seems unfair if you dont.

You might need to read the MIT license a bit.

"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions..."

If he tried to force a payout on the grounds of the MIT license, it would invalidate the license itself due to the above clause. Honestly, considering the above clause, I'm not even sure why this situation escalated to the point it did. The condition for that clause is simply that the author is credited. Once done, it's free to use/copy/reverse engineer and rebuild. A name wasn't dropped where it should have been, and suddenly the world is on fire. I'm all for credit where it's due, but this is some grade-school chest-beating we're seeing here.

Edited for clarity on the condition of the clause.

It's more a matter of integrity than legality or claiming a licensing fee. An honourable dev does not sell SW he got for free, regardless of the
licensing  terms. He should only charge for the value he adds. In this case it's trivial because the value of the copied code was minimal.

[kisk]

I have to say its amazing to watch this community. For you, mrb, to give your ok stamp on the issue shows your true light. HUGE bow to that.. in this day and age not many would do the same. So far its your code and expertise that has brought the current ZEC community to where it is and I think everybody owes you a TY. The terms of the license don't require any type of monetary compensation, and I don't think its any of anyone's business, however I think most would agree you deserve what you put in. I'm sure an agreement has been made, as it should.

Claymore's miners have always been more commercial (closed source) and typically based off other's base code. Don't get me wrong -- Claymore benchmarks, tweaks, and improves the base code and if I was coding miners I would do the same thing.

[eXtremal]

mrb
Claymore copied a part of host code and round0 (blake2b) ? I think, only kernel rounds and solutions extract code is valueble, and it's not copied.

[cryptomined]

Thats great claymore included the credit.

what really got me was that some of his users were using silentarmy in claymores miner but then bashing it and other linux miner zogminer in his thread... and it was going unchecked...  that just set me off to be honest.... seemed very ignorant and rude of his users to be doing so.  I was a little shocked at first from claymore and his supporters... as I was probably the first person to call out that silentarmy was in claymores miner (even though no one had found the blake2 info yet).

I hope he can continue to share part of the 2.5% fee as the fee is very large, and sharing it will help to continue development of the miner which is at the core of claymores work.

In my opinion he totally corrected any wrong that was originally done, priase to both marc and claymore fo handling this the way they did.

Alot of claymore fans were complaining about it getting removed at first, but it did not have to be removed as was originally stated, only credit had to be given, so I am glad that was done and the miner is once again available for all to use.

Thanks guys!  looking forward to future miners from both, interested to see what Claymores V2.2 or V3 with Nvidia support will do in windows

And cant wait for marc's windows release.

I have always been a fan of claymores miners and will continue to be.  Thanks again Claymore and thank you Marc.

[rockyforever]

Thats great claymore included the credit.

what really got me was that his users were using silentarmy in claymores miner but then bashing it and other linux miner zogminer in his thread... and it was going unchecked...  that just set me off to be honest.... seemed very ignorant and rude of his users to be doing so.  I was a little shocked at first from claymore and his supporters... as I was probably the first person to call out that silentarmy was in claymores miner (even though no one had found the blake2 info yet).

I hope he can continue to share part of the 2.5% fee as the fee is very large, and sharing it will help to continue development of the miner which is at the core of claymores work.

In my opinion he totally corrected any wrong that was originally done, priase to both marc and claymore fo handling this the way they did.

Alot of claymore fans were complaining about it getting removed at first, but it did not have to be removed as was originally stated, only credit had to be given, so I am glad that was done and the miner is once again available for all to use.

Thanks guys!  looking forward to future miners from both, interested to see what Claymores V2.2 or V3 with Nvidia support will do in windows

And cant wait for marc's windows release.

I have always been a fan of claymores miners and will continue to be.  Thanks again Claymore and thank you Marc.

I like how you say "his users" as if we are one entity, a cult, a following of claymore and now are guilty by association under your premise. Apparently, since I use his miner and have used his miners in the past, I am guilty as well.

Then you go on to say how you like his miner but in the zcash forums continue to blame his miner, his alone and him personally, as the reason for the price crash.

You're just annoying at this point. 

[cryptomined]

I like how you say "his users" as if we are one entity, a cult, a following of claymore and now are guilty by association under your premise. Apparently, since I use his miner and have used his miners in the past, I am guilty as well.

it is some of his users, and no need to be rude to each other here
some of his users do act like cult followers, and many of them were bashing linux miners which code of which was in the very miner they were using - that is ignorance...

and his miner was released which cause an incredible increase in hashrate which did drop the price
no need to be ignorant about it.. blame or not, they are the reason the price has had such a steady drop... its just the way it is...

if the truth is annoying,... just don't listen to it

and i did/do like his eth miner, no need to lie about it
but at the same time no need to be ignorant of what happened with the ZCash miner

[antantti]

and his miner was released which cause an incredible increase in hashrate which did drop the price

 

I have been using claymore's miners and I still am sometimes. There just is no reason to do that anymore when there are faster opensource miners available for every 'big' profitable algo.

[cryptomined]

and his miner was released which cause an incredible increase in hashrate which did drop the price

 

I have been using claymore's miners and I still am sometimes. There just is no reason to do that anymore when there are faster opensource miners available for every 'big' profitable algo.

if his miners are more optimized in the future than there is more reason to use claymore's miner and pay him the 2.5% dev fee... it really depends on how much better he can make it.  though i still think that fee is a little high and think the fee should be more like his eth miner at 1%.... but thats just personal opinion...  his groupies are fine with it so all the better that claymore gets the money rather than them.  

we can just use our opensource miners in linux and save ourselves the 2.5%

[antantti]

2.5% still leaves 97.5% for us greedy miners. I got no problem with that.

Every blockchain needs one 'miner' to run. 1 or 1000000 miners, coins generated daily stays more or less the same.

[cryptomined]

2.5% still leaves 97.5% for us greedy miners. I got no problem with that.

Every blockchain needs one 'miner' to run. 1 or 1000000 miners, coins generated daily stays more or less the same.

actually its 77.5 for you, 2.5 for claymore and 20 for funders..

[rockyforever]

I like how you say "his users" as if we are one entity, a cult, a following of claymore and now are guilty by association under your premise. Apparently, since I use his miner and have used his miners in the past, I am guilty as well.

it is some of his users, and no need to be rude to each other here
some of his users do act like cult followers, and many of them were bashing linux miners which code of which was in the very miner they were using - that is ignorance...

and his miner was released which cause an incredible increase in hashrate which did drop the price
no need to be ignorant about it.. blame or not, they are the reason the price has had such a steady drop... its just the way it is...

if the truth is annoying,... just don't listen to it

and i did/do like his eth miner, no need to lie about it
but at the same time no need to be ignorant of what happened with the ZCash miner

As you stated, "it is some of his users," not being rude but classifying everyone of his users as bashers was inappropriate

Also I am apparently "lazy," being rude is not my forte, but for you, it is.

I quote, "who cares about windows ... only people who are too lazy to install free stable and secure linux LOL... why do people want to use an OS with backdoors out the ying yang"

And with your argument about the hashrate dropping the price. Please learn the fundamentals of mining.

"hash rate is just the overall number of hash calculations performed per unit time, which is inferred from looking at how many blocks have been found over a given time window"

The market is affected by supply and demand. Currently, there is no demand because who the heck would hold at a price of 2-3 btc (even WAY higher initially) when they could sell. The same number of blocks are found but the difficulty goes up. In this case, when claymore was released, the "lazy window's miners" now could now mine at an equivalent hashrate, spreading the wealth of coin to more dumpers. Now instead of few dumping, everyone is dumping coin. So yes, you could correlate the dump to claymore's miner but that isn't ignorance if someone were to argue the technicalities of the situation. The dump happened because the same amount coins were mined, but more individuals were earning them, so the dump was happening in a quicker (though smaller, consistent interval).

My point being, stop blaming claymore's miner as the reason, because the coins were getting dumped by everyone (including you, as you mentioned many times...so not sure your argument), his miner just increased the amount of dumpers, not coins. Honestly, the ignorance is the fact you're butt hurt about not making a bunch of money because linux miners had a hold on consistent profits prior to claymore's miner. To argue otherwise is ignorance. (searching your name on zcash forums brings up the same post on multiple discussions with the same graphs correlating claymore's miner to zec crash...... even some users pointed to the troll fest of posts).

[rockyforever]

2.5% still leaves 97.5% for us greedy miners. I got no problem with that.

Every blockchain needs one 'miner' to run. 1 or 1000000 miners, coins generated daily stays more or less the same.

actually its 77.5 for you, 2.5 for claymore and 20 for funders..

Cool math bro,

you make 2.5% more than the claymore followers. Maybe we like to support someone who donates to the community with a window's miner for us "lazy" folk.

[cryptomined]

Cool math bro,

you make 2.5% more than the claymore followers. Maybe we like to support someone who donates to the community with a window's miner for us "lazy" folk.

dev fee is not a donaiton to the community - its not free... and marc is working on a free windows miner - really free
nicehash had an amd miner, did you pay them for their contribution?  if you care to support windows miners so much... what was wrong with paying htem while there was nothing else around?

do what you want man, im not here to argue  or fight with you.

i have no problem with you using claymores miner or using it myself it if pays off

at least you know you are lazy

and since your so lazy you can mine even easier if you download the torrent of EthOS... its GNU license and free to download from the pirate bay

[rockyforever]

Cool math bro,

you make 2.5% more than the claymore followers. Maybe we like to support someone who donates to the community with a window's miner for us "lazy" folk.

dev fee is not a donaiton to the community - its not free... and marc is working on a free windows miner - really free
nicehash had an amd miner, did you pay them for their contribution?  if you care to support windows miners so much... what was wrong with paying htem while there was nothing else around?

do what you want man, im not here to argue  or fight with you.

i have no problem with you using claymores miner or using it myself it if pays off

at least you know you are lazy

and since your so lazy you can mine even easier if you download the torrent of EthOS... its GNU license and free to download from the pirate bay

Creating someone for me, and many others (aka cult followers according to you) to use so we can participate and ONLY paying a measly 2.5% for his hard work, its our way of saying thank you. Apparently, according to your correlation and math, there are many (aka "a lot of lazy window miners") who appreciate claymore's work to make the price "crash" as it did.

Please leave these forums. Your account is so fresh, leave your hate and discontent and non-contribution to the zcash forums.

Tango!

[cryptomined]

non-contribution

goodbye, I will learn where I want to learn, and that will include here.  I have browsed these forums for a long time, just have not posted very much..

but I was one of the first to download and test out claymores windows miners.. beat you to that one.. the ONLY REASON I CREATED AN ACCOUNT TO POST WAS TO THANK CLAYMORE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

and on this forum you were the one that called yourself a cult follower... not me

[mo35]

non-contribution

goodbye, I will learn where I want to learn, and that will include here.  I have browsed these forums for a long time, just have not posted very much..

but I was one of the first to download and test out claymores windows miners.. beat you to that one.. the ONLY REASON I CREATED AN ACCOUNT TO POST WAS TO THANK CLAYMORE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

and on this forum you were the one that called yourself a cult follower... not me

please , dont come back to zcash forums either , you personal vendetta against Claymore is more than annoying there too ... exchange personal emails , buy baseball bat or something , just keep your personal feelings ... ehm personal ?