JBoss Queries Apache Geronimo Code Similarity

Kanagawa writes "This morning, Jim Jagielski, Exec. V.P. and Secretary of the Apache Software Foundation, announced on the geronimo-dev mailing list that 'the ASF received a letter from JBoss's lawyers regarding... the similarity of code between [J2EE implementation] Geronimo and JBoss.' The letter is available in PDF. According to the letter, similarities were noticed back in July, and haven't been fixed."

Any point?

[henc]

I'm not into this case, but at a first glance it seem to me that Geronimo really is just what JBoss is, right ? - So what's the point in remaking it? JBoss is already free? (LGPL!)

henc

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ouch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...no.

Apache is Open Source. That means it's free for all to examine. It's one thing to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, but it's quite another to slowly open the jar and reach inside while in direct eye contact with your mother. I'm quite sure this is unintentional. See the previous comment for a rebuttal.

XLevel

[Anonymous Coward]

The first exhibit seems to be originally derived from:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-log4j/ ex amples/customLevel/XLevel.java

which is apache licensed in the first place.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

When lawyers present code in documents...

[Kentamanos]

Check out the source code on page 8. Since when is the copyright symbol allowable in Java syntax?

Re:Even the variable names are the same

[Delirium Tremens]

Good try, but no, really. First of all, CELLPADDING only appears in the jBoss part of the diff, not in Geronimo. Secondly, that's how you are supposed to specify the padding for cells in an HTML table. So, if Geronimo had decided to use an HTML table in their javadoc with cell padding, they would have had to use CELLPADDING. But all that is irrelevant since they didn't.

Re:Marc Fleury's cash cow is in danger.

[Trepalium]

At least the JBoss lawyers pointed out three files that they claim were copied from the outset, AND they're willing to let ASF just remove any copied code. SCO did neither. You could only view SCO's copied code via NDA, and removing the code wasn't an option. Only much later, they decided to show a (fairly bogus) sample at the conference. I have yet to see a dozen press releases from JBoss claiming that ASF is destroying their business, and that ASF is unamerican, and trying to subvery copyright law.

author's name adjusted?

[rkww]

Maybe this is just an artefact of the way these program samples were generated, but it's pretty obvious that the author's name in the 'author' comment at the foot of the left-hand column on page seven (of the pdf of the original complaint letter) is in a completely different font to that of the rest of the code on that page: check out for instance the 'g' character.

Well DUH!!!

[ChaseTec]

Did anyone not see this coming? And if you didn't here's why you should have:

Mark Fleury's original response to Apache Geronimo
As our customers know, we are a business, a serious one and we seriously believe in and defend "professional open source". That includes legal protection of IP. Make no mistakes, JBoss will AGGRESIVELY defend its copyright and LGPL license.

And from the Elba [sourceforge.net] website
Think of Elba as a latticework for Geronimo--and as a shield to buffer the Geronimo codebase and CVS repository from any LGPL code. As Geronimo is built, its code will replace the code from Elba, bit by bit until there's nothing left in Elba at all. At that time, Elba will cease to exist and only Geronimo will remain; we'll have a big party and you're all invited.

So if Geronimo is being developed as outlined at the Elba website then they'd have to have the exact same method signatures....

relicensing

[morgue-ann]

Which brings up an important question: can code be re-licensed by people other than the authors when the original license was less restrictive?

Example: Alice in Wonderland is in the public domain. Peter Zelchenko made an ebook out of it with nice typography and claims copyright on the derived work. Can I cut the text & paste it into a document of mine?

Example: the Almquist Shell (ash) seems to have been a contribution to some form of BSD Unix. It's also in busybox with a GPL at the top and a Berkeley license at the bottom.

What if Kenneth Almquist doesn't like the GPL and wants his code to be distributed that way? The BSD license pretty much says he's already given up the right to say anything, but using ash in a closed source project now gives me a funny feeling:

1) I'm worried that someone will claim ash is GPL and I must release the source. The later license doesn't affect earlier versions.

2) I have a copy of busybox source in my account. I've only looked at the docs & looked at the sources enough to figure out where they originally came from, but if there are bug fixes in the GPL'd code, they'd better not be in my ash, at least in the same form.

One more twist: the ash I have is licensed under the "Almquist Public License" which is BSD-like. The copyright message in the busybox version suggests that K.A. contributed it to Berkeley and the license for that *is* the BSD license.

If I want a later version than my 1989 one, I run the risk of hitting the part of the timeline where GPL contributions began.

Not copied?

[Todd Knarr]

Looking at the code as a programmer, some things stand out:

1. The "copying" JBoss claims doesn't fit. There's differences in braces, keywords and other things that wouldn't be accounted for by automatic reformatting of code. I can't see a programm who's copying code directly going back in and doing that kind of editing. I'd expect braces to be maintained, for example, yet in several places they aren't.
2. The similar names are obvious names for types, variables and functions. Given the same spec to start from, without having seen the JBoss code at all, I'd pick the same names.
3. The places they cite as having code-structure similarity are very simple. Frankly, it looks to me like there's only one sane way to write that code.

It can't hurt to do a check, but I suspect JBoss is seeing copying where there's just only one obvious way to do something and most programmers, working independently, will make basically the same set of choices for that code.

It's a shame

[macrealist]

Two open source projects quibiling over licences instead of producing software, and the project with the less restrictive licence needing to "re-invent the wheel."

What is the reason in "redesigning" an open source project under a different license? Is JBoss so poorly written that it can't be the base of another LGPL project? Is the Apache license so much better for open source projects that it needs to be done?

In the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?" There sould be no issue here.
(except maybe that "Free, as in freedom" doesn't mean what it should)

another view...

[Famanoran]

Given the similarities between this and the SCO, Linux claims, is it possible that this could be a "ploy" by the JBoss people to establish a public precedent for the GPL?

I mean, if the public see Apache and JBoss figuring it out, could the outcry against SCO and their detrimental case against Linux be enough to quash it?

"clownery" ! :)

[sacrilicious]

If you go to the Geronimo website (http://wiki.codehaus.org/geronimo), you'll see this delightful text at the top of the page:

Wiki temporarily locked to prevent slashdot clownery - go through the usual channels to get read-write admin access

more dirt

[Anonymous Coward]

Found this on TSS. Looks pretty crazy that a Geronimo developer admits in a CVS comment that it is derived code.

:

"As an open source developer I choose to submit my code under LGPL because it ensures me that this code will remain open source, yet the license is flexible enough to allow for embedding. When I first became aware of Geronimo, I took a look through the codebase just for kicks and was deeply concerned that some of my code was derived from or distributed under the ASL license.

As an example, below is a comment from the JBoss CVS from Dain Sundstrom. Dain contributed EntityInvocationRegistry to the JBoss project back in March of 2003. He clearly states in his commit message to the JBoss CVS that this file is a derivative of certain files that I wrote "This functionality was merged from ....". This file was moved to and renamed to the Geronimo project. As I believe in the integrity of the LGPL, I was greatly disturbed by this.

Date : 2003/3/23 4:28:42
Author : 'dsundstrom'
State : 'Exp'
Lines : +0 0
Description :
Tracks the entities and contexts associated with a transaction.This
functionality was merged from GlobalTxMap, TxEntityMap, and
EntitySynchronizationInterceptor.

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/incubator-gero ni mo/modules/core/src/java/org/apache/geronimo/ejb/S ynchronizationRegistry.java?rev=1.1&content-type=t ext/vnd.viewcvs-markup

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout* /j boss/jboss/src/main/org/jboss/ejb/entity/Attic/Ent ityInvocationRegistry.java?content-type=text%2Fpla in&rev=1.1

Add to this is comments on the Geronimo mail list stating that they are taking JBoss code concerned me even more. Here's a comment from David Blevins:

http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listN am e=[e-mail]&msgId=9981 28

And Elba == JBoss 3.2.

"We're taking the Elba/OpenEJB JAAS code, merging it together ...."

So I spent an hour or two looking through the Geronimo codebase back in August of this year....Here are some of my findings.....

Go to theserverside.com to see more.

Re:Even the variable names are the same

[brianosaurus]

Dude. That's not a "diff". That's the bits of those files that are the SAME. All the "***" means areas that DID NOT MATCH.

In other words, the few instances where the code appears to be copied are a couple of methods having to do with Logs. Those methods (at least the similar parts) also seem to be little more than wrapping a call to an apache library function.

So... The wrappers probably use the same parameter names as the apache function they are calling. So they should be pretty similar. The method names are [something]Log, following the normal conventions of adding "Log" as a suffix to "something" when you're making the method that Log stuff.

Further, the "copied" bits of similarity have enough differences in them to render it completely moronic. The entire thing is basically a template. The few chances the authors have to alter the template (variable names, and the (brief) comments) were different, but given the limited scope of those bits, they were still similar.

If that's all they have, this is just silly.