Re: [urgent] Parted 1.4.4

[Andrew Clausen]

address@hidden wrote:
> 
> I started my EFI Guid Partition Table scheme work before I knew about the
> bug-parted list, so I'm to blame there.  I'm happy to keep the discussion of
> this feature to the list.

Cool :-)

> For any code I've written, I can get the copyright assignment made to the
> FSF.  I'm not too worried about that.

Excellent :-)

> The issue is that there's a CRC function which Intel uses.

This kind of stuff is probably insignificant for copyright purposes.
(Obviously, we should talk to the FSF's lawyer, if we intend to
use Intel code)

> Intel's EFI
> Sample Implementation has a non-GPL-compatable license (which Matt W.
> caught).

Can we get them to change this?  I don't know anything about the
politics here.

> So, I found a virtually identical function (being used in OpenSSH,
> which has a BSD-license) (the likely source where Intel got it from in the
> first place), but it says (in crc32.c):
> 
> +/*
> + * The implementation here was originally done by Gary S. Brown.
> + * I have borrowed the tables directly, and made some minor changes
> + * to the crc32-function (including changing the interface).
> + * //ylo
> + */
> +
> +#include "crc32.h"
> +
> +  /* ============================================================= */
> +  /*  COPYRIGHT (C) 1986 Gary S. Brown.  You may use this program, or
> */
> +  /*  code or tables extracted from it, as desired without restriction.
> */
> +  /*
> */
> 
>  and the header file for this one function says:
> 
> +/*
> + *
> + * crc32.h
> + *
> + * Author: Tatu Ylonen <address@hidden>
> + *
> + * Copyright (c) 1992 Tatu Ylonen, Espoo, Finland
> + *                    All rights reserved
> + *
> + * Created: Tue Feb 11 14:37:27 1992 ylo
> + *
> 
> So no, it isn't public domain, it's copyrighted, with a combination of "use
> as you will" from Brown, and "All rights reserved" from ylo.

"All rights reserved" looks scary.

> As I needed to modify the algorithm slightly, I added my own comment to
> crc32.c:
> 
> +/*
> + * Wed Nov 29 2000 Matt Domsch <address@hidden>
> + * Code copied from openssh-2.1.1p4.  Modified to match the Intel
> + * crc32 functionality by seeding the function with ~0 instead of 0,
> + * and xor'ing with ~0 at the end.
> + */
> 
> I (and Dell) won't care about the 2 lines of code I modified, nor I doubt
> Brown or ylo will either.  But, IANAL, and am very confused here...

I think you're correct.  Eben Moglen (the FSF lawyer) said that code
less than 30 lines is unlikely to be contentious.  (Obviously, it
depends on the circumstances, like how much you fit on a line, etc.)

Aren't there any other (free) implementations of crc32?

I did a search for "gnu crc32", and found a match in zlib, if that
helps...

        http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/

Is the crc32 thing here the same thing?

Thanks,
Andrew Clausen