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Date:      Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:35:22 +1100 (EST)
From:      Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au>
To:        Dirk Engling <erdgeist@erdgeist.org>
Cc:        freebsd-jail@freebsd.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, sib@tormail.org
Subject:   Re: Handbook Jail Chapter rewrite available for critique
Message-ID:  <20130321170556.Q32142@sola.nimnet.asn.au>
In-Reply-To: <5148980A.1070408@erdgeist.org>
References:  <1UHfYF-000LVV-4Y@internal.tormail.org> <5148980A.1070408@erdgeist.org>

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On Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:53:30 +0100, Dirk Engling wrote:
 > On 18.03.13 20:16, sib@tormail.org wrote:
 > 
 > > to configure things themselves. In my experience, ezjail is a much better
 > > solution. I also see that you are the maintainer/author of qjail and like
 > > to shovel your opinion as the only solution, both in this "rewrite" and
 > > all over the FreeBSD forums.
 > 
 > Taking a look at the qjail code I can not help to notice several odd
 > similarities with the ezjail-admin script, down to the very basic bail
 > out routines. I would not go so far to claim it was just a global
 > search/replace job but to me the code looks familiar enough to find the
 > 
 > # Copyright  2010,  Qjail project. All rights reserved.
 > 
 > offensive. I am usually quite open with the license of my software,
 > beerware is as permissive as it gets. I just can not take some script
 > kiddie right out copying my code verbatim and selling it as his, not
 > even acknowledging me as the original author.
 > 
 > Anyone here with suggestions how to properly react to this kind of "fork"?

Yes.  Publicity.  Making sure the FreeBSD community gets to finds out.

You may be polite and un-selfserving enough to not go so far Dirk, but 
I will.  Huge swathes of qjail are direct copies of your code, in most 
cases only with the names of the variables changed from ezjail_* to 
qjail_*.  I found it cute renaming 'flavour' to the American spelling.

Anyone looking at bin/qjail from qjail-2.1.tbz alongside the latest 
ezjail-admin (mine downloaded from your cvsweb) cannot fail to notice
within the first couple of screens.  Sure there are changes, additions 
and deletions, but to fail to acknowledge the original authorship of 
this code, and the implication that Joe Barbish (aka 'Qjail project') is 
its original author is entirely outrageous; not ethical, even if legal.

To that end I'm cross-posting this to -questions, where Mr Barbish has 
also posted about his proposed "rewrite" of Chapter 16 of the Handbook, 
which is nothing but a huge and poorly written manual for 'the qjail 
way', with its peculiar assumptions and unique "jailcell" terminology.  
"Fourth Generation", no less!

The idea that the "doc gang" would entertain the idea of removing all of 
the worthy content of the present Chapter 16 - even if it does need some 
updating - and replace it with this effort is laughable, yet stranger 
things have happened if there's any disconnect between developers and 
documenters .. witness the Handbook firewalls section, by Joe Barbish.

cheers, Ian



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