The DM42 is not a physical clone of Free42, so.....

[zeno333]

Does SwissMicros have the right to protect what makes the DM42 different than what a physical clone of the Free42 would be??? Some aspects of the DM42 have the right to be protected as Proprietary, right???...That being what makes the DM42 different than a mere physical example of the Free42 program????

[Thomas Okken]

(03-30-2018 11:15 AM)zeno333 Wrote:  Does SwissMicros have the right to protect what makes the DM42 different than what a physical clone of the Free42 would be??? Some aspects of the DM42 have the right to be protected as Proprietary, right???...That being what makes the DM42 different than a mere physical example of the Free42 program????

Do me a favor and read the GPL.

This link is also at the top of the Free42 home page:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Read this if you don't understand what the fuss is about in the first place:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html

[Thomas Okken]

Apparently I also need to point out, again, that Free42 has been released under GPLv2 from the very beginning, version 1.0, November 4th, 2004. And I've always made that clear, at the top of my web page, and in the product descriptions in the iTunes App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market). How anyone could profess to be surprised at my insistence on honoring the terms of the GPL, or what those terms are, is a mystery to me.

[emece67]

(03-30-2018 11:15 AM)zeno333 Wrote:  Does SwissMicros have the right to protect what makes the DM42 different than what a physical clone of the Free42 would be??? Some aspects of the DM42 have the right to be protected as Proprietary, right???...That being what makes the DM42 different than a mere physical example of the Free42 program????

Since the very same moment Swissmicros released a product containing a program that included a previous piece of software covered by the GPL license, they lost the right to protect the remaining part of the program they wrote[*]. That's the price to pay for using a previous program they didn't wrote but, well, thanks to it they are getting an economical benefit.

Of course, the hardware (including the PCB? & mechanical designs) may be protected, if they decide so. I doubt that the electrical design may be protected, though, as it may thought as some "generic embedded thing with an screen and some buttons", but this is only a not-really-educated guess.

Regards.

[*] With some caveats here, but IMHO the DM42 does not fit in such caveats.

[EdS2]

It's good to see that SM are in the process of fixing up the alleged GPL violation.

On the question of whether SM could protect their own innovations: yes, they probably could. The physical design of the calculator could be protected, their name could be protected, the name of the calculator could be protected: trademarks, registered trademarks, registered designs, design patents are I think the appropriate means. It might be that something in the construction could be patented, whether a circuit or a mechanism. The PCB design would, by default, be copyright by the designer, presumably SM, if they'd put creative effort into it. The manuals would be copyright in the same way. If there were a PC-side device driver that would be copyright by its originators too.

As for the software, if they have made contributions or modifications, they have copyright there too - but if that software was licensed to them under GPL, then their modified version must also be licensed under GPL. If the software was licensed otherwise, then different rules apply.

If a calculator manufacturer wanted to make a proprietary version of an existing open source emulation for use in their product, they could approach the copyright holder and negotiate for a different license. (That's perfectly possible, and in the case of a sole author it's also practical. It might even have happened. The point is that the copyright holder has a right to issue different licenses on different terms to different people for different purposes.)

[fermienrico]

(03-30-2018 12:01 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Apparently I also need to point out, again, that Free42 has been released under GPLv2 from the very beginning, version 1.0, November 4th, 2004. And I've always made that clear, at the top of my web page, and in the product descriptions in the iTunes App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market). How anyone could profess to be surprised at my insistence on honoring the terms of the GPL, or what those terms are, is a mystery to me.

I think you're hell bent on GPL but failing to recognize the efforts of taking a GPL code and making a physical product out of it. That is a monumental task and I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

[Harald]

(04-01-2018 05:43 PM)fermienrico Wrote:  

(03-30-2018 12:01 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Apparently I also need to point out, again, that Free42 has been released under GPLv2 from the very beginning, version 1.0, November 4th, 2004. And I've always made that clear, at the top of my web page, and in the product descriptions in the iTunes App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market). How anyone could profess to be surprised at my insistence on honoring the terms of the GPL, or what those terms are, is a mystery to me.

I think you're hell bent on GPL but failing to recognize the efforts of taking a GPL code and making a physical product out of it. That is a monumental task and I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

It's your first post on the forum and you are saying "programming an HP 42 simulation like Free42 - how hard could it be..."?!?

[rprosperi]

(04-01-2018 05:43 PM)fermienrico Wrote:  

(03-30-2018 12:01 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Apparently I also need to point out, again, that Free42 has been released under GPLv2 from the very beginning, version 1.0, November 4th, 2004. And I've always made that clear, at the top of my web page, and in the product descriptions in the iTunes App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market). How anyone could profess to be surprised at my insistence on honoring the terms of the GPL, or what those terms are, is a mystery to me.

I think you're hell bent on GPL but failing to recognize the efforts of taking a GPL code and making a physical product out of it. That is a monumental task and I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

Were it not for Free42, the DM42 would not exist. Period.

As for making a 42S simulator not being hard, I look forward to seeing yours as proof of concept.

[pier4r]

(04-01-2018 05:43 PM)fermienrico Wrote:  I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

Lol.

But hey if for you is not hard (unlikely), please go for it and release a 42s flavor with Berkeley license so you will solve all the problems discussed here.

[Luigi Vampa]

(04-01-2018 05:43 PM)fermienrico Wrote:  I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

Welcome to this forum. It is nice to see a new face. Let me note that you will find great green berets around (myself not included). One of the things I love about this forum is the helping attitude of all forum members, not to mention the good manners.
As a humble suggestion, mixing bold statements and too-straightforward language doesn't seem to fit this forum's netiquette, as you may have already noticed.
Please, provide the rest of team members with some bio info in your profile, so that you could be given guidance and help, if needed, just in case, I mean, you know.

[fermienrico]

(04-01-2018 07:59 PM)Luigi Vampa Wrote:  

(04-01-2018 05:43 PM)fermienrico Wrote:  I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

Welcome to this forum. It is nice to see a new face. Let me note that you will find great green berets around (myself not included). One of the things I love about this forum is the helping attitude of all forum members, not to mention the good manners.
As a humble suggestion, mixing bold statements and too-straightforward language doesn't seem to fit this forum's netiquette, as you may have already noticed.
Please, provide the rest of team members with some bio info in your profile, so that you could be given guidance and help, if needed, just in case, I mean, you know.

All - I am sorry it didn't come out right. I mean to say that a company like Swiss Micros if they want to be serious about building calculators should just develop their own Free42 code from scratch so there is no problem or question about code authority and would make Mr. Okken happy!

[BarryMead]

(04-02-2018 12:24 AM)fermienrico Wrote:  All - I am sorry it didn't come out right. I mean to say that a company like Swiss Micros if they want to be serious about building calculators should just develop their own Free42 code from scratch so there is no problem or question about code authority and would make Mr. Okken happy!

Am I correct in guessing that you have never written numerical analysis software or computer algorithms to solve difficult mathematic functions with perfect accuracy to a specified number of significant digits? For those who have, it is ludicrous to assume that such software development is EASY! I don't think that Swiss Micros has the knowledge or experience to tackle these challenges. All of the calculators that they have produced have used OTHER PEOPLE'S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY to handle these difficult numerical analysis challenges. Without official permission, they appropriated many man-years of hard work by Hewlett Packard's expert engineers to produce their Voyager, and DM41 calculators, and they acquired through GPL License the work of Thomas Okken to create the DM42. It took Pauli, Marcus and Walter more than 5-Years to create the WP-34S and they had the IBM Decimal Number floating point libraries to start from. ANYTHING FROM SCRATCH is nearly IMPOSSIBLE! It is INSULTING to professional engineers and software developers when people so carelessly minimize or trivialize the EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and time consuming work we do!

'fermienrico Wrote:I think SM should have never used Free42 and built their own re-engineered version of HP42. It is not hard.

"Its not hard"? How did you arrive at that conclusion? To us Professional Engineers it IS HARD! I would like to know how you would do it without it being HARD? By all means show us the source code for a solution that is NOT-HARD!