taskSavannah Administration - Tasks: task #12640, Submission of BFGMiner

 
 

task #12640: Submission of BFGMiner

Submitter:  Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Submitted:  Sat 01 Jun 2013 05:29:01 AM UTC
   
 
Should Start On:  Sat 01 Jun 2013 12:00:00 AM UTC Should be Finished on:  Tue 11 Jun 2013 12:00:00 AM UTC
Category:  Project Approval Priority:  * 5 - Normal
Status:  Done Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  alip2890 Open/Closed:  Closed
* Mandatory Fields

Add a New Comment Rich Markup
   

Jump to the original submission

Fri 16 Aug 2013 06:11:51 PM UTC, comment #14: 


> perhaps it would make sense to simply stop distributing their hardware design?


Yeah, that's what I meant with my suggestion "to remove th Ztex stuff".

> Also, I am curious why GPLv3-only is a problem.


It doesn't pose a problem at the moment, since v3 is the latest version. But this might change in future, when v4 gets written (if a need for that arises). See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#VersionThreeOrLater for a good detailed answer on that.

I will set the task status to "Done" now and close this task, since everything seems to be resolved. I'm trusting you that you will remove the hardware designs.

Best regards.

Aljosha Papsch <alip2890>
Fri 16 Aug 2013 06:04:46 AM UTC, comment #13: 

bitstreams/src/* are not linked to the main software at all, only distributed alongside it for convenience. In fact, they don't even represent software: these are hardware source codes. If the problems with the ZTEX driver code are considered resolved, perhaps it would make sense to simply stop distributing their hardware design?

Also, I am curious why GPLv3-only is a problem.

Thanks,

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Thu 15 Aug 2013 08:05:08 PM UTC, comment #12: 

Hi,

I looked over the new tarball. This time I found the following files.

In bitstreams/src/X6000_ztex_comm4/hdl there are some files which contain the following notices:


// This file contains confidential and proprietary information
// of Xilinx, Inc. and is protected under U.S. and
// international copyright and other intellectual property
// laws.


or


*     This file is owned and controlled by Xilinx and must be used solely      *
*     for design, simulation, implementation and creation of design files      *
*     limited to Xilinx devices or technologies. Use with non-Xilinx           *
*     devices or technologies is expressly prohibited and immediately          *
*     terminates your license.


Any files containing these notices can't be hosted anywhere on Savannah. It's clearly unfree.

Furthermore, in bitstreams/src/ZtexBTCMiner all files are licensed under GPL v3 only. It needs to be v3 or later.

My suggestion would be to remove the Ztex stuff. But I don't know if this is wanted by you and how big the impact would be in your application. In case it's too big / not wanted, I guess Savannah isn't the right place for this project.

Sorry for the inconvenience and the long evaluation process, which may now be useless.

Best regards.

Aljosha Papsch <alip2890>
Wed 17 Jul 2013 02:46:08 AM UTC, comment #11: 

I'm not sure attaching the file here worked. If not, it is available from http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/bfgminer/3.1.3/bfgminer-3.1.3.tbz2

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Wed 17 Jul 2013 02:44:59 AM UTC, comment #10: 

I'm uploading my latest source release in case you'd like to go over it.
I believe I've addressed all the copyright concerns EXCEPT possibly the minor contributors by authors who do not respond. For that, I've added a comment to clarify my current position on the legality of relicensing them under the GPLv3 - IMO, it's pretty reasonable, but I'm not sure if that will be sufficient for Savannah. Can't hurt to ask, I guess.
If not, I guess I'll have to keep waiting until they respond or I get the time to strip out the code they wrote. :(

Either way, please let me know.

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Mon 03 Jun 2013 10:22:43 AM UTC, comment #9: 

There are still some open issues, so I'll activate the project for mailing list use only.

Luke, please upload a new tarball on the tracker once you are finished fixing the issues.

> Is a git submodule sufficient (my distribution files are built with these populated)? Perhaps with a separate mirror repository or branch, if including it on Savannah's git is still necessary?


I think that's sufficient.

>> bench_block.h


> I'm not sure this is copyrightable. It consists of a hash of public data, a hash of unknown data (unlikely anyone ever even kept track of what it was more than a few minutes), a timestamp, and a public floating-point number.


I wasn't sure what it was, but if it's trivial leave the copyright and license notice.

I think that was all open issues (and of course the GPL-2-only files).

Best regards.

Aljosha Papsch <alip2890>
Sun 02 Jun 2013 09:10:10 PM UTC, comment #8: 

"All rights reserved" is meaningless.  Legally speaking, you don't need anyone's permission to remove it.  (Not that I am a lawyer or giving legal advice, but I am pretty certain of this point from all I have seen.)

In any case, if this is the only point remaining before the project is approved, it's fine to approve it (completely) now.  It's not legally problematic in terms of Savannah requirements for the phrase to stay, either, after all.  It's just a question of clarity and avoiding useless doubts in the future.

Thanks for your interest in Savannah!

Karl



Karl Berry <karl>
Site Administrator
Sun 02 Jun 2013 06:37:23 PM UTC, comment #7: 

The discussion you refer to doesn't seem to address whether it can/should be removed by persons other than the copyright holder. All the files with this clause in BFGMiner inherited it from code that came from other projects originally. Any insight on this?

You have my promise with regard to not uploading anything to the project until this is resolved to your satisfaction.

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Sun 02 Jun 2013 03:46:27 PM UTC, comment #6: 

For the CC'ed: There is an ”important” decision to make. Please read on (the last paragraph in particular).

The “discussion” on -email is unavailable- came to the conclusion that the “All rights reserved” notices should be removed to avoid doubts. I quote Karl Berry:

 > As far as I know, "All rights reserved" has no legal effect any more, […].  But it would still definitely be better to remove it, simply to avoid the useless (and inevitable) future questions of whether it is a problem.

Therefore, please remove the “All rights reserved” occurences.

To your question whether to already enable the project in order to have mailing lists:  I'm uncertain about this.  Usually we don't do this.  If you promise however, that you or another person will not upload any code to Savannah until the issues are solved, I might as well do it. I'm giving this time until tomorrow, so anyone willing from the Savannah team can give their voice.

Best regards.

Aljosha Papsch <alip2890>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 11:25:58 PM UTC, comment #5: 

Replacing Linux's list.h with uthash's utlist.h seems to be trivial and working well.

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 09:00:36 PM UTC, comment #4: 

Also, in case resolving the remaining issues might take some time, would it be possible to create the project on Savannah just for mailing list use (an announcement list is really the main thing the project is missing right now) and keep this task unresolved (and source not uploaded to Savannah) until the rest is done?

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 03:04:41 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Minor self-correction: ccan is GPL-2 or later, so I can just add the missing comment headers.

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 02:55:33 PM UTC, comment #2: 

On Saturday, June 01, 2013 11:51:50 AM Aljosha Papsch wrote:

> thanks for submitting your project to Savannah! I'm evaluating your
> submission and found the following issues:


Thank you for the detailed review!

> Not all copyrightable files contain a copyright and license notice. These
> are some source files, most header files and some other files.  You can
> find an incomplete list at the end of this message.  Please add copyright
> and license to those files.
>
> There is the file adl_functions.h with an invalid copyright notice. The
> year is missing.  Please add the correct year.


Easily fixed (in git): 2010-2011

> There are some binary files in the bitstreams directory.  Apparently the
> accompanying source files are in Git repository. However, all source files
> need to be included in your distribution.  Therefore please include the
> missing source files in your distribution.


Is a git submodule sufficient (my distribution files are built with these populated)? Perhaps with a separate mirror repository or branch, if including it on Savannah's git is still necessary?

> Files with missing copyright and license notices:
>
> adl.h deviceapi.h driver-opencl.h findnonce.h fpgautils.h ocl.h scrypt.h


I don't see anything copyrightable in these files.

> bench_block.h


I'm not sure this is copyrightable. It consists of a hash of public data, a hash of unknown data (unlikely anyone ever even kept track of what it was more than a few minutes), a timestamp, and a public floating-point number.

On the other hand, I could probably safely replace it with zeros too...

> elist.h


This seems to have come from the Linux kernel include/linux/list.h. My email to Linus 4 months ago regarding licensing seems to have gone ignored. Additionally, I use code added to list.h by Rusty Russell and Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo. However, it is, as self-described, a mere "simple double linked list implementation" - so perhaps it's not eligible for copyright at all? Any advice on resolving this one? :/

> The example files, java file


Contacted the authors of API.java and api-example.py - any others I'm missing?

> mknsis.sh


Very old, unused; will remove entirely.

> files in ccan


Sigh, this looks like another GPL-2 mess. Will look into resolving it as well, perhaps by simply replacing it with some standard option-parsing library...

The rest have been addressed in git.

Luke

Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 11:51:50 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Hi,

thanks for submitting your project to Savannah! I'm evaluating your submission and found the following issues:

Not all copyrightable files contain a copyright and license notice. These are some source files, most header files and some other files.  You can find an incomplete list at the end of this message.  Please add copyright and license to those files.

There is the file adl_functions.h with an invalid copyright notice. The year is missing.  Please add the correct year.

There are some binary files in the bitstreams directory.  Apparently the accompanying source files are in Git repository. However, all source files need to be included in your distribution.  Therefore please include the missing source files in your distribution.

You already mentioned the GPL-2 only files. This is indeed an issue. We have to wait for the minor contributor to reassign his work under GPL-2-or-later before I can accept the project.

And as last: There are some files which say “All rights reserved”.  I'm currently discussing on -email is unavailable- whether this is problematic or not.  You will hear from me.

In the meantime you might already update your files and upload a new tarball at the bottom of the task page.

Best regards.

Files with missing copyright and license notices:

sha256_cryptopp.c sha256_via.c adl.h bench_block.h compat.h deviceapi.h driver-cpu.h driver-opencl.h dynclock.h elist.h findnonce.h fpgautils.h icarus-common.h jtag.h logging.h miner.h ocl.h scrypt.h util.h
The example files, java file, autogen.sh, configure.ac, Makefile.am, make-release, mknsis.sh, scrypt121016.cl, files in ccan, files in libblkmaker (also configure.ac and Makefile.am), a file in openwrt

Aljosha Papsch <alip2890>
Sat 01 Jun 2013 05:29:01 AM UTC, original submission:  

A new project has been registered at Savannah
This project account will remain inactive until a site admin approves or discards the registration.


Registration Administration


While this item will be useful to track the registration process, approving or discarding the registration must be done using the specific Group Administration page, accessible only to site administrators, effectively logged as site administrators (superuser):



Registration Details


  • Name: BFGMiner
  • System Name:  bfgminer
  • Type: non-GNU software & documentation
  • License: GNU General Public License v3 or later





Description:

ASIC/FPGA/GPU/CPU Bitcoin miner in C


Other Software Required:

autoconf GPL-3 http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
automake GPL-3 http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
libtool GPL-2 http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/
pkg-config LGPL http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config
libcurl MIT http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/
libjansson MIT http://www.digip.org/jansson/
libncurses MIT http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/



Other Comments:

GPU overclocking (not officially supported feature for secondary use) requires non-free AMD Catalyst driver only due to lack of support in free driver (external to this project). ASIC/FPGA mining (primary use) has no such limitations.

ZTEX FPGA driver is licensed GPL-2 which is conflicting with project's overall GPL-3 license. Primary authors have agreed to relicense as GPL-3+, but actual relicensing is waiting on a minor contributor (whose code can be removed in the worst case scenario)


Tarball URL:

http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/bfgminer/3.0.2/bfgminer-3.0.2.tbz2


Luke Dashjr <lukedashjr>

 

(Note: upload size limit is set to 16384 kB, after insertion of the required escape characters.)

Attach Files:
   
   
Comment:
   

No files currently attached

 

Depends on the following items: None found

Items that depend on this one: None found

 

Carbon-Copy List
  • -email is unavailable- added by karl (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by alip2890 (Clarify a question)
  • -email is unavailable- added by alip2890 (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by lukedashjr (Submitted the item)
  •  

    There are 0 votes so far. Votes easily highlight which items people would like to see resolved in priority, independently of the priority of the item set by tracker managers.

    Only logged-in users can vote.

     

    Follow 12 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2013-08-16 alip2890 StatusIn Progress Done
        Percent Complete0% 100%
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2013-06-03 alip2890 Carbon-CopyRemoved -email is unavailable- -
    2013-06-03 alip2890 Carbon-CopyRemoved -email is unavailable- -
    2013-06-03 alip2890 Carbon-CopyRemoved -email is unavailable- -
    2013-06-02 alip2890 Carbon-Copy- Added -email is unavailable-
        Carbon-Copy- Added -email is unavailable-
        Carbon-Copy- Added -email is unavailable-
        Carbon-Copy- Added -email is unavailable-
    2013-06-01 alip2890 StatusNone In Progress
        Assigned toNone alip2890

    Back to the top

    Powered by Savane 3.13-758e.
    Corresponding source code