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    SubjectRe: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)]y
    Date
    > > > 
    > > > There was one more match that was publicly claimed as copying by
    > > > the maintainer of RTLinux -- a few fields in the scheduler structure.
    > > > The script caught those, too, once I set the threshhold down to 3
    > > > lines, which also picked up hundreds of mismatches.
    > >
    > > Good luck making that stick in court. First of all, the RTAI guys have
    > > admitted over and over that RTAI is a fork of the RTLinux source base.
    >
    > Paolo (the maintainer) hasn't. I (the second largest contributor)
    > hasn't. I understand why others talk about RTAI and RTLinux forking,
    > since the _projects_ forked, and the _ideas_ forked, but the _code_
    > was always separate. At some point, a person gives up trying to
    > argue the point, and just says "it forked". But when you get down
    > to brass tacks, there was no code fork, because there was never one
    > code base.
    >
    > There was some sharing of code in the beginning, typically code that
    > was sent to the RTLinux mailing list by third parties. In that case,
    > the code was copyrighted by the individual. The fact that it later
    > showed up in RTLinux as "copyright VJY associates" does not change
    > the fact that Paolo got it from the original author.
    >

    david - you know the code.

    rtai-24.1.6a/fifo/rtai_fifos.c:line 25-31:

    */
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENT NOTE: besides naming conventions and the idea of a fifo handler
    function, the only remaining code from RTL original fifos, as written and
    copyrighted by Michael Barabanov, should be the function "check_blocked"
    (modified to suite my style). However I like to remark that I owe to that code
    my first understanding of Linux devices drivers (Paolo Mantegazza).
    /*

    in rtai-1.6:oldfifos/rtai_fifos.c:line 1-9:

    /* Modification of RTL-FIFO devices by Paolo Mantegazza */
    /* The original RTL_FIFOS are developped and copyrighted by Michael */
    /* Barabanov, 1997, who derived them from fs/pipe.c in Linux, which is in */
    /* turn copyrighted with "Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds". */
    /* This modified version is for use with the RTAI module. It works in the */
    /* same way as its original counterpart, but now you can chose either a */
    /* task queue for bottom halves or an immediate wake up, plus assigning a */
    /* static user buffer. */
    /* See functions: rtf_create_using_bh and rtf_create_using_bh_and_usr_buf. */


    In my opinion it is obvious that the RT comunity that was RTLinux and RTAI for
    quite a while was "stealing" ideas and code from each other - and that is a
    very good thing to happen in GPL'ed environments, there was for a long time
    one mailing list and that was being shared in a productive manner by both
    groups. The fact that the two groups splitt up and are fighting each
    other is what is really hurting both sides a lot and probably also hurting
    Linux in the market that has interest in hard-realtime.

    hofrat
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