Samsung Accidentally Leaked The exFAT Linux Driver

[Morpheus]

I'm still confused by the technical aspect, but as I'm not a developer, it's not obvious to me. If it's a linux kernel module, where's the point in copying parts of it into the module code ? I mean, it can create conflicts with the "kernel core" code, am I right ?

[smitty3268]

Somebody opened the can of worms! It seems a Samsung employee did dirty things in the code, copying GPL'd stuff into their "propietary" filesystem driver and that means it's a derived work by all means.

Are there plans about researching that source code? I'm sure there can be more interesting stuff out there, maybe an automated pattern search could give more results.

So well, exFAT is available. Now let's attack the patents that cover it

While this likely does violate the GPL, that doesn't mean the code is now somehow magically available for us to change into GPL code.

It's still proprietary code, it's just that now someone could sue Samsung if they wanted to. If you had enough money, this would probably be a great way to pressure them into releasing the driver under the GPL, but unless they agree to do so it's still proprietary. And as mentioned elsewhere, even if it was GPL it would still have a bunch of MS patents you'd have to license before legally using. Just like x264, for example.

[rzrx]

Here's the original source of the leak that I have used in the exfat-nofuse project: https://github.com/kcrudup/gt-n8000-...cc3ca/fs/exfat (kernel v3.0)
Have fun, don't forget to tell mom and dad if you find more lines of the original GPL Fat code there.

Take care.

[tga.d]

A couple points in response to quite a few comments:
Just because code violates the GPL doesn't mean it gets released under the GPL. I haven't seen anyone make this mistake explicitly, but I feel as though it has been implied to some degree. So for example, if Samsung did violate the GPL with this code, and it was supposed to be licensed under the GPL, there are multiple legal resolutions, of which licensing the code under the GPL is only one. More likely, they would pay a fine and rewrite the code or something similar. Because of that, even if the code that rxrz released supposedly under the GPL was supposed to be under the GPL originally, doesn't mean it actually is for certain legally licensed under the GPL now. In fact, since it violates Samsung's license, it's not. A violation of a license that violates a license isn't necessarily legal.
And secondly, it's entirely possible Samsung cannot license the code under the GPL because it contains code or patents that aren't theirs to license (namely, Microsoft's), which were licensed to Samsung to use and maybe even distribute in binary form, but not relicense.

[chrisb]

How is it with the GPL? If this developer would be the one who commited the original source code to the linux kernel, would he be allowed to relicense his own code for this driver?

The developer would still hold the copyright to the lines that they wrote, so they could relicense those lines however they want, but couldn't relicense any lines written by other people. In this case, the code has been contributed to by various people over many years and the Samsung source includes code and comments from different authors spread over years, so it seems unlikely that someone managed to contact them all and produce a legal closed source fork.

[ChrisXY]

The Samsung code appears to have been written by a developer who has been doing Linux kernel development since 2002 (at least),

How is it with the GPL? If this developer would be the one who commited the original source code to the linux kernel, would he be allowed to relicense his own code for this driver?

[miro]

Well this is at least one example for taken code - if that happended vice versa then the kernel devs would have to re-implement another solution for this. I bet Samsung won't care to do that. Not to be mistaken, I think Samsung is doing a good job at all for open source projects, I do believe and hope that they will release that entire code as GPL...but that may not happen for sure since they did not do it yet.

[brosis]

Just to clear things up - Vim_User and archibald are *BSD fans, so you don't even need to provide them any evidence, you will be just wasting our time.
But in any case, recently some German company was sued for 7000$ for copy-pasting GPL code.
Of course, I predict these two will now switch song to "How GPL is parasitic and why you should use BSD instead, all hail parasitic EULA".
I don't want to derail thread, so I am off from conversation. I already got copy of source code, so kmagb

[Vim_User]

/sigh

Don't we have right here in this thread a random piece of closed source code with evidence all over it?

With the gigantic sample size of exactly one piece of software your conclusions must be true. /sarcasm
Now just come up with some real evidence that all do that, as you claim.

[prodigy_]

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

/sigh

Don't we have right here in this thread a random piece of closed source code with evidence all over it?