Phil Taylor - MosLock - Deception

[rjk]

I do not know whether he has violated a law. One could argue that to "pass off" someone elses work as your own could be deceptive conduct, however my issue here more has to do with ethics.

I do not believe it is ethical to sell someone elses work and call it your own, the additions Phil has made to the Eliteweaver script are pretty minor ones, the bulk of the work is in the IPN script which Phil did not write.

One area of law I am clear on though is that Phil cannot claim exclusive copyright to mosLock and it is highly doubtful any court would find he owns copyright over the code. (see the explanation of "original work" in an earlier posting) He did not substantially create an original work with mosLock, therefore his claim of copyright is at best dubious.

The main problem here is one of appearances. What Phil has done is to market a piece of software as his own work when in reality he contributed fairly minor changes to someone elses original work and now claims exclusive copyright over the entirity. At the very least I think the ethical thing to do is make it clear on his web site that what he is selling is a minor modification of someone elses code.

[me@phil-taylor.com]

The first I heard about this thread is when I did a unrelated search in google - and then saw my name in the results.

Firsty I am saddened that no one has contacted me personally or even drawn my attention to this thread.

Secondly, I am upset that you feel I have decieved you. I have not said that the code is 100% my own work, I have followed and obeyed all license agreements for the IPN eliteweavers script - I have commited no crime in breaching the licence I recieved from them (For free)

I do not believe it is ethical to sell someone elses work and call it your own,

As part of the core development team (now retired) this is being done to me as well loads! Think of all those people who pass Mambo off as their own, remove my name from the copyrights, remove mambo credits from source - even calling Mambo something else and saying they wrote it! I am not guilty of saying that mosLock or mosIPN are all my own work - never - however I have followed to the letter (by including copyright statements) the license agreement grated to me when I downloaded a free piece of code.

In fact I have even mentioned eliteweavers in the instructions that are printed in the admin area - telling you to LOOK IN THE SOURCE CODE (to change a var if needing to debug) - how can that be classed as trying to decieve you - when I know damn well the source has credits for eliteweavers!!!!!

The full license of the script is as follows:

################################################## #######

# Copyright © EliteWeaver UK All rights reserved. #

################################################## #######

# #

# Program : IPN Development Handler #

# Author : Marcus Cicero #

# File : license.txt #

# Function : MINI EULA #

# Version : 2.0 #

# Last Modified : 10/04/2003 #

# Copyright © : EliteWeaver UK #

# #

################################################## #######

# THIS SCRIPT IS FREEWARE AND IS NOT FOR RE-SALE! #

################################################## #######

# END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT #

# Redistribution and use in source and/or binary forms #

# with or without modification, are permitted provided #

# that the above copyright notice is reproduced in the #

# script, documentation and/or any other materials that #

# may have been provided in the original distribution. #

################################################## #######

# Copyright © EliteWeaver UK All rights reserved. #

################################################## #######

Taken from License.txt in the download freely available from:
http://www.eliteweaver.co.uk/testing/ipntest.php

This license has not been breached.

You said you wanted to make an ethical argument/case against me - well I dont think I have anything to be ashamed of at all.

An original work can be viewed as lines of code (which in every application are almost identical) or in bringing together classes, functions and other peoples work to create a new "package" - I created a package that works, and now you are telling me that is unethical.

What I have done is no different to a linux distribution - full of other peoples work but under a name like Redhat or SUSE (With additional code created by me - like the graphics for the linux distributions.)

I am saddened by this whole thread.

Phil Taylor

[me@phil-taylor.com]

Dare I say it but I also believe you are posting under a "second account" or false username - you have only ever posted in this thread and only ever against me.

I guess if the forum moderators check the IP addresses in the database they will see !

[me@phil-taylor.com]

From - Mon Feb 07 03:40:08 2005
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
Message-ID: <4206E316.90009@phil-taylor.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 03:40:06 +0000
From: Phil Taylor <me@phil-taylor.com>
Reply-To: me@phil-taylor.com
Organization: Blue Flame IT Ltd
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6+ (X11/20050205)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: ipn@eliteweaver.co.uk
Subject: Please Comment on this.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Eliteweavers.

I have been accused of Deception by a forum member for including your
Free IPN Handler within a commercial product I sell which is a
commercially integrated component for the Mambo CMS
(www.mamboserver.com) system (Of which I am an ex-core developer).

Here is the thread:
Phil Taylor - MosLock - Deception

Please can you publically comment stating if you believe I have breached
your license or if you have any objection to your great code being
included in my products (I am happy to forward copies of my complete
code for your inspection.)

I operate a totally open business and welcome your honest feedback into
my actions. If you personally ask me to remove such code from my
products, I will. However I dont believe I have breached the license
terms at all.

Kindest regards
Phil Taylor

Director - Blue Flame IT Ltd
www.phil-taylor.com

134 Biddulph Way
The Deer Park
Ledbury
HR8 2XL
+44 1531 636335
0800 358 5498
me@phil-taylor.com

[absalom]

Originally Posted by me@phil-taylor.com

Dare I say it but I also believe you are posting under a "second account" or false username - you have only ever posted in this thread and only ever against me.

I guess if the forum moderators check the IP addresses in the database they will see !

False username ? Robert King (RJK) has his website linked into Mambers for crying out loud, so I doubt that means you can claim he's being deceptive about himself.. I do not know Robert apart from what I've seen on the forums, and the last time I saw him was on the Mamboserver forums before his posts got purged in the changeover to VBB.

That said, you did at one point market mosIPN with the following blurbs:

1. I dont use/Dont like PayPal - will mosIPN support anything else?
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Stop asking this question right now - dont email about it, dont discuss it dont even think it! (Already had loads of emails!!!) mosIPN takes advantage of the PayPal IPN system that is very specific and the code has been specifically written for this too. I WILL NEVER BE SUPPORTING ANY OTHER PAYMENT PROCESSOR. Have I made myself clear ?

The code that handles the IPN capability is the Eliteweaver script.

And since we're dealing with legalities:

Originally Posted by me@phil-taylor.com

An original work can be viewed as lines of code (which in every application are almost identical) or in bringing together classes, functions and other peoples work to create a new "package" - I created a package that works, and now you are telling me that is unethical.

An original work cannot be viewed as lines of code in which every application are almost identical. An original work can only be considered original when it's over a certain percentage change in code/layout/design. Prior to that point, any work is considered "derivative works".

[taiter]

Actually - if the code is GPL, anyone is free to sell it. You just can't remove the copyright. If you are a smart coder, you will make PART of the copyright requirement to include a notice on the rendered webpage. PHPNuke does that, although nobody pays attention to it.

-Tai

[pjdesign]

stop ya bitching

[Amenophis]

What a palava !! Is MosLock really necessary anyway fellas,.....I don't think so. I use a simple trigger within mysql to update the tables mos_users and mos_core_acl_groups_aro_map. Yes I know mysql only allowed triggers from v5 onwards but postgres had them prior.

Users have the account updated to restricted and content is visible, that simple.

If you want the details let me know

Cheers A

[eliteweaver]

Originally Posted by me@phil-taylor.com

Please can you publically comment stating if you believe I have breached your license or if you have any objection to your great code being included in my products...

This is the first time I have come across this thread or have been made aware of this (sorry Phil I never got your e-mail). I know this thread is now 2+ years old but people still research the internet so for archival and historic reasons and to set the offical record straight regarding this matter I would like to say the following:

My license clearly states that the code for my ipn development handler is freeware and cannot be re-sold. This means that you simply cannot charge for my code. You can of course "bundle" the code with your own application as long as my copyright notice is kept intact (which in this case it was).

Whether or not a person is charging a fee for their application or not is completely irrelevant. As long as you are not charging for my code then you can use it in both free and commercial applications alike. Phil Taylor did not breach my licensing agreement and did absolutely nothing wrong! I have no objection with him or anyone else using my code for commercial purposes.


Kindest regards,

Marcus Cicero
EliteWeaver UK

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