Re: HJWasm 2.28 release

[guga]

Just by curiosity, did you use any Microsoft tools to create HJWasm, and is there an open source licence attached to it?

If he did, he´s surely allowed to and is allowed to protect his work as he wish. What he (or anyone) can´t do  is distribute M$ copyrighted code and claim it´s yours. So, he can do one of the 2 things:
a) Release his work with all components made either by him or a third part (ml.exe, lib.exe etc - If M$ license allow it to) or...simply. In any case, he may use his own license specifically on his code/tool, and release M$ tools with their own licenses (as Steve did)
b) Release his work without the M$ components, but put a reference on the site for people be able to download and use. But, as far i remember, redistribution of ml.exe, lib.exe is allowed under some circumstances, so, better simply releasing it all together taking care only to warn users what belongs to him and what belongs to M$. (Again...as Steve did :) )

[habran]

We are having an interesting conversation here, however, nidud is right, we are continuing jwasm because we can do whatever we want
with it, whichever system we want, that is why we are investing so much time and effort. It is very flexible and well structured :t

[guga]

" It is very flexible and well structured " Indeed. Although i´m not used to it yet, granting freedom is a must 

[guga]

Btw, habran.

Does HJasm allow conversion in between Omf and coff libraries too ? If not, perhaps it could be needed a tool that can convert omf to coff  :)

[johnsa]

Agner Fog's OBJCONV tool can convert between COFF, OMF, ELF, MACHO etc etc.

[nidud]

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[jj2007]

Microsoft Licence

Microsoft have tended to use assembler code in the very low levels of their operating systems where even the best C compilers do not deliver sufficiently optimised code for the intended purpose.

Oops, that's stuff for the other thread ::)

Jokes apart: How do HJWasm & AsmC perform when compiled with GCC?

[guga]

Nidud. You seems to collect this information from the OSdev.org, right ?

Masm and masm32 sdk are 2 different things.

The M$ license related to VisualStudio is described here: https://www.visualstudio.com/license-terms/mt171547
As expected, it allows creation of opensource apps (It cannot be generally forbidden as you are implying). Basically what the license grants is copyright protection for Visual Studio source and it´s components.

"Distribution Restrictions. You may not:

    use Microsoft’s trademarks in your applications’ names or branding in a way that suggests your applications come from or are endorsed by Microsoft; or
    modify or distribute the source code of any Distributable Code so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An “Excluded License” is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification or distribution, that (i) the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or (ii) others have the right to modify it."

And the other thing is the masm32 sdk license which is a exclusively one made by Steve. http://www.masm32.com/licence.htm  It is unrelated to M$ one.

What Steve did on his license, although, despite it´s content, cannot be prohibited to users release their source for free under open source etc, is easy to understand. Steve is mainly trying to protect the authors of the codes and his own work, avoiding others to steal your and his source or claim that his app is yours etc etc. It is perfectly understandable that protection. We are using and creating apps (or parts of it) using masm or others assemblers (Fasm, Nasm, Tasm, RosAsm etc) from decades, and it is deeply frustrating seeing the hard work that is done being stolen by a company or a person etc.

"The MASM32 SDK cannot be used to create open source software or any other form of software under any form of licence that requires the user of the MASM32 SDK to surrender the rights they are afforded under the MASM32 licence. In particular the MASM32 licence completely excludes projects licenced under the GNU organisation's published GPL licence and/or variants."

Although, technically, a license cannot forbid users to create apps releasing their source codes  - i.e: Open source - (or release their own sources with or without licenses etc) , it is totally understandable the concern. Unfortunately, GPL (and others licenses) are somewhat restrictive. Is it a problem of OpenSource releases ? No..it´s a problem of GPL licensing itself and, of course, as i said before, a problem of whom tries to steal others people code claiming that belongs to him. It don´t make any difference if he releases under open source or is selling etc. The problem remains to the origin of what he did. The steal other people´s work, i mean.

Dunno what motivated Steve, but, it is understandable after years of activity in the masm and assembly community that he tries to protect his work and our work too. One thing you can be sure, masm32 sdk is Steve´s baby and, as such, is protected. You cannot take masm32 sdk that contains the work of Steve and many others and simply create a copy of it claiming that : ..Hey...I´m the guy/company who made this SDK and, therefore, i´ll sell it for 1 billion dollars to Mr. Billy "The kid" gates, because i also created the ml.exe etc etc (Yeah..i created all of this, it was M$ who stole from me because i´m releasing it with the Sdk i also stole -oops..created- from Steve...).  :icon_mrgreen: :icon_mrgreen:

Years ago Rene (The original author of RosAsm. He is retired now) and i had a discussion with Alex Ionescu and his team at ReactOs board. I found in between their sources, hundreds of copies  of M$ protected code inside without being changed or adapting one inch. At the time, this could lead ReactOS guys onto problems, and we tried to warn them to remove the M$ code from inside ReactOS or put a warning for their users that some parts of the code belonged to M$ and not from him etc. The answer at the time...well..this is for another thread :icon_mrgreen: :icon_mrgreen: but, we endeded at choosing to stay away from ReactOS until they solve this situation, because, at the time, what they were doing could imply in pure piracy.

[nidud]

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[guga]

"Yes, and the moon is made of cheese and all that."

  But..the text related to  Microsoft License  was collected from the OsDev.org. It´s their assumption, and it is not accurate, btw.

http://wiki.osdev.org/MASM

Copyright protection and authorial rights are not a monster only seen by big corps. Not sure the US legislation for that, but it is somewhat a common sense regarding this kind of protection that any software license may contains null clauses (I mean, clauses that have zero effect on the consumer´s because they can be nullified) specially those who confront to the intellectual property of the consumer itself or is done in disrespect of the public interest over the private interest.

Organizations such as WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), BSA (Business Software Aliance) have already analysing this kind of debates from a long time. (Open source licenses x commercial licenses). US is also a member of WIPO and more then 180 countries did it as well.

Although each country may have his own legislation on authorial rights, they all must follow the same directives made on the Bern/geneve Convention for example regarding this kind of protection.

The bottom line of all of this is quite simple. You can protect your work on the way you want, but....these protections rights ends when you infringe the right of others.

You can´t build a software license, for example only allowing a user to work on your software wearing a Santa Claus suit, dancing La macarena and only after having a Crazy and wild sex night with Pamela Anderson

There are limits to what you can or cannot impose on your software license, and specially because at the very end it works like a sort of contract with the major difference that the final consumer did not signed anything, did not agreed with anything when bought the license on the store, and most specially is not at all allowed to change any clause of the licensing system. It is a unilateral contract, that´s why it is not absolute, i mean, that´s why it have restrictions and limits to what you can impose on it or not.

Those limits and restrictions, of course, varies from country to country, according to their own legislation of intellectual property and authorial rights, in general. But...all of those countries also signed over the decades, international treaty (some of them not completely restrictive) that must be respected.

[nidud]

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[hutch--]

One of the good things about (c) Copyright is that it is not driven by collective opinion but by well understood criteria in how it is stated. Back in 1998 I simply asked Microsoft in Australia about the binaries in the Win98DDK and they said YES as long as you include the licence. The necessity to protect the MASM32 SDK came in the years after when so many different interests tried to either take it over, absorb it into some other licencing system or simply steal it and sell it.

From its original design, it was always going to be freeware and a wide number of people contributed to it on the basis of it being freeware. The rise of GPL and its army of bludgers trying to take over anything they could get their maulers on became the main nuisance and it was followed by a whole range of treacherous dirty work behind the scenes, imbeciles trying to get under the copyright, attacking the Microsoft licence, massive levels of dis-information and an army of dimwits who could not properly understand the GPL licence who were to stupid to read past the CopyLeft bullsh*t.

A GPL licence is a rigid enforcement of property ownership based on the idea that if you use any part of GPL licenced software, then you must publish your entire code under a GPL licence. A blatant grab for other people's code that many were foolish enough to get caught in. I have no beef with folks who CHOOSE to write GPL software, as the authors they can do what they like with their own work but I am distinctly hostile to anyone stealing anyone elses software and giving it to an organisation like GNU.

The licence for the MASM32 SDK was designed to ensure that no-one could impose any extra conditions on its use. It is fully unencumbered freeware that anyone can download and write their own software without being beholding to any organisation, without ever having to pay for it, without having to publish their own code or hand over the ownership of their code to anyone or any thing else.

While there is a range of very good quality GPL code available when there is enough people to maintain it and continue a project's development, there is in fact a mountain of chyte dumped all over the internet that ranges from mediocre to terrible and that is characteristically the end result of half arsed crap by amateurs trying to bundle many things together that they did not write themselves.

[guga]

"A GPL licence is a rigid enforcement of property ownership based on the idea that if you use any part of GPL licenced software, then you must publish your entire code under a GPL licence."

This is exactly why i was forced to change the license of RosAsm years ago. Users can work with RosAsm as a developer under it´s own license to guarantee that none will steal others people work. But, also, if someone wants to build anything and put the GPL on it, that´s also ok. That was the initial thoughts when we were recreating the license system.

The problem is that, as you said, there are a bunch of imbeciles over the net stealing the work of others under the assumption that GPL allows them to do it simply because you released the source code for development. GPL started as a incredible idea, but, this past years it´s becoming problematic because the bad attitude of others that insists in steal other people code and don´t have either the decency of insert a note saying who is the original author and so on. Those are basically one of the reasons i´ll eventually completely remove any relationin betweenh GPL license and RosAsm license to make absolutely sure, that people will be free to do what they want on their own codes and, at the same time, preserve RosAsm source code made either by me or other developers that worked hard on it, or will eventually join to improve the project.

I remember reading when you asked M$ about it and, as far i remember, even at that time, there was no reason to you don´t use according to their own license. Either did it for precaution or perhaps or to make sure you could do it the important is that you are allowed to. Btw, not only you, but anyone that respects the same principles and obey the license usage provided on the Visual Studio license (the link i posted earlier) can use, in fact. Releasing the license or source code or information regarding the ownership of the product (ml.exe etc...or any M$ header) is a must for being safe on  Copyright/authorial rights legislation.

Nidud, i really don´t understand why you are making those assumptions. Read the license of Visual Studio again and you will understand better how you can use it´s components (that originated masm 32 sdk, btw).

Third, Steve is not allowed to just update the version of ML.EXE in the MASM32 package by just download the newest version of MASM. Neither is he allowed to distribute ML64.EXE in the new 64-bit package.

In matter of fact, he is allowed and always was allowed to, in fact.

The only way you can legally use Visual Studio will then be if the company you work for (or own) buy a license for a specific project, and the software produced will then not be open source but distributed as a commercial product. This is why it's a problem using a commercial product like VS to produce open source software.

Read the M$ license again on the link i provided. ;) You are allowed to make commercial products or open source products with Visual Studio.

Individual license. If you are an individual working on your own applications to sell or for any other purpose, you may use the software to develop and test those applications.

Not to mention Visual Studio community that was specific released for Open Source purposes "Visual Studio Community
Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual developers"
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/

The major restrictions of M$ license of Visual Studio (Commercial versions or not ) and it´s components (including ml etc) is basically this:

"Distribution Restrictions. You may not:

    use Microsoft’s trademarks in your applications’ names or branding in a way that suggests your applications come from or are endorsed by Microsoft; or
    modify or distribute the source code of any Distributable Code so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An “Excluded License” is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification or distribution, that (i) the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or (ii) others have the right to modify it."

If all of what you are saying resembles the minimum truth, then i can´t imagine the terrible misbehavior of the poor programmers that release their sources of create their apps on places like codeproject or sourceforge, for example.  So..according to you, all of them that uses M$ products  cannot be allowed to release their apps or even sell their work, simply because they coded them with Visual Studio ?

I believe you are making a small confusion about one individual or company who commit piracy and sell his app with an illegal copy of Visual Studio and the ones that have bought the license. And...btw...even those who are using commercially a illegal copy are not only in infringement of M$ license directly, what they are infringing is the Copyright of M$, not to mention eventual tax evasion, tributes or whatever is charged by the local government when you acquire or sell a product that you also are not paying.

[nidud]

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[hutch--]

I am pretty much of the view that any author of a programming tool like an assembler should make sure they properly control the licencing of their project so that the bludgers don't find a way to try and take it over. The risk as usual is a forked fork of a forked fork with the normal fragmentation of the original concept so that the entire original project is lost. If you still have code that is beholding to any external licencing system, get rid of it, rewrite it yourself and you will retain the integrity of the original concept.

You may find this funny, long ago I used to get requests based on some crappy interpretation of the published MASM32 licence to obtain the full source code to the MASM version of my Quick Editor. Now apart from doing the programming community a service by never publishing its content, it was part of the GPL bludger brain that wanted to control and/or modify an application that they had no chance of grasping or comprehending. A basic editor is easy enough to write, its when you add the extension capacity, the scripting engine, the range of things that it will run directly off the menus, the support apps that allow menu editing, the basic plugin interface, changing the settings etc etc etc ....

With the development of the 64 bit MASM code, I have posted a script that builds a complete editor with everything working but for anyone who wants to build a programming editor, they will have to write any extensions of it themselves.