From: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
To: linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [linux-usb-devel] New, yet unsupported USB-Ethernet adaptor
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 22:29:47 -0700
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Cc: Michael Helmling <supermihi@web.de>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On Tuesday 02 May 2006 10:06 pm, Michael Helmling wrote:

> > Was it you who removed the copyrights from the "usbnet" driver and
> > changed the author assertion to one "M Subrahmanya Srihdar" ??
> > I'm guessing the latter; the www.moschip.com site implies that
> > its engineering HW is in India.
> 
> No, I did not change the code in any way, it is exactly the version they 
> mailed me.

That's what I strongly suspected.


> But I don't really understand what you are saying about the usbnet  
> module. They gave me the sourcecode for a yet not available kernel module 
> "mcs7830", not usbnet. Or did they just modify usbnet? I don't know enough 
> about such things to distinguish from both. 

They just hacked "usbnet".  There are huge chunks of code, and comments,
that are clearly identical.  At least half of the "moschip" driver.


> > Either way, blatant plagiarism and theft of copyright is unlikely
> > to get into upstream kernels.
> 
> I personally have the feeling that they didn't do this by purpose. They were 
> very willing to help me with the driver and don't seem to understand much of 
> kernel development. Anyway, if this IS a copyright violation, they should 
> really change it quickly.

"M Subrahmanya Srihdar" didn't "accidentally" copy the bulk of usbnet, remove all
the attributions, and replace them ... not possible.  There were certainly a few
chip-specific additions of course, right where "usbnet" expects them, but the
core driver is obviously all "usbnet" code.

- Dave

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