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For the people who can’t see the page - I don’t have it open anymore, but it was someone asking for help to figure out what version of certain libraries was use

by fwlr 4y ago

For the people who can’t see the page - I don’t have it open anymore, but it was someone asking for help to figure out what version of certain libraries was used in the BrickLink studio software, since some flags they expected to work weren’t working. Another user replied that they did some digging into the decompiled source and found which version it was, but they also found strings from that source that matched GPL-licensed libraries (including at least one that user had written himself, because he recognized hardcoded filepaths to locations on his own machine he had used when developing the library).

app4soft 4y ago
Archived copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20210301135016/https://devtalk.blender.org/t/on-what-version-of-cycles-is-bricklink-stud-ios-eyesight-renderer-based/17566 http://web.archive.org/web/20210301135016/https://devtalk.bl... From comment #3 in this discussion: > Got bored, did some digging in their binary, they built using some of our our svn libraries (I know it’s our libs since the paths embedded for some of the source files are local to my computer :slight_smile: ) which makes it easy to track down > they ship openimageio 1.7.15 which means the code is likely from somewhere in between 2017-06-04 and 2018-08-27 which is indeed around the 2.79 time frame. > It would have been nice if they kept the code opensource, so it could get all the improvements blender makes easily, but they seemingly chose not to go that way. which is somewhat strange since they clearly lifted the GPL licensed bf_blenlib [1] so the closed source nature of eyesight is odd to say the least. > [1] the executable contains strings like <inline>Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to Blender installation Dir! , Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to first valid drive! Path might be invalid!</inline> and <inline>BLI_dynstr_append text too long or format error.</inline> that can only could have come from bf_blenlib
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  Is there precedent for that holding in court? Saying something like "I put this unusual string in my software & it is also in theirs" seems pretty useless from a legal perspective.
  - wingmanjd 4y ago
    Don't some map makers put ghost towns or roads that don't actually exist in their own maps as a sort of fingerprinting method? Unless you actually visit that particular spot, one might not know and inadvertently copy the proprietary map data,
    - meshaneian 4y ago
      > kgeist 8 hours ago > Reminds me of "trap streets" on maps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
  - paledot 4y ago
    On the contrary, that seems more likely to be understood by a non-technical audience than any amount of decompiler output. Doesn't replace the latter, but it certainly removes a reasonable doubt.
    - sidewndr46 4y ago
      Yeah if the string is something like "I sidewndr46 am the copyright holder for this software", I can't really see how it would be possible for a vendor to say they just happened to put that in their own independently created product.
  - cma 4y ago
    "Unusual string" seems a lot more innocuous than unusual string referring to the product as another copywrited work by name which contains the same unusual string.
  - kgeist 4y ago
    Reminds me of "trap streets" on maps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street >In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential plagiarists of the map There's a section on legal issues in the article
- ofchnofc 4y ago
  [dead]
- app4soft 4y ago
  UPDATE: Additional context from Orion Pobursky[0], the LDraw.org's webmaster: > The https://Stud.io https://Stud.io has been historically bad with attribution of their sources. LDraw had to contact them directly to get them to acknowledge use in their about page and most average users still don't know that the Stud.io's library is back by LDraw.[1] [0] https://wiki.ldraw.org/wiki/Meet_Orion_Pobursky https://wiki.ldraw.org/wiki/Meet_Orion_Pobursky [1] https://twitter.com/billtfish/status/1636435679076057089 https://twitter.com/billtfish/status/1636435679076057089
arp242 4y ago
There's some source code over here: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 The discussion this story links to is two years old; I don't know how much has changed or how it all fits together.
- app4soft 4y ago
  > There's some source code over here: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 But they did not mentioned that they forked Blender, thus they violates GPL. And as BrickLink Studio based on Blender code, Studio source should be licensed under GPL as well.
  - arp242 4y ago
    It's not at all clear to me it is a fork.
    - pajko 4y ago
      So a derived product
      - arp242 4y ago
        Well, that's not clear at all to me either, at least not in its current state.
cuddlyogre 4y ago
I think it is important to distinguish between Blender and Cycles and Eyesight, the render engine that Studio uses that is in question. Blender is the application and Cycles is the render engine. Studio itself is a Unity application that would almost certainly be incompatible almost in its entirety with any source code they could pull from Blender. At that point they would be porting logic. Their Eyesight renderer is a separate application that looks to be a fork of Blender with everything but Cycles pulled out. COPYING.txt explains that Eyesight is based on Cycles using the Apache License v2. C:\Program Files\Studio 2.0\PhotoRealisticRenderer\win\64\license if you're curious. Not that it excuses them necessarily, but Studio was not created by LEGO. Bricklink was purchased by LEGO relatively recently and had no say in its development. It is very likely a small team built it not even thinking about legalities.
- toyg 4y ago
  > Bricklink was purchased by LEGO relatively recently and had no say in its development. It is very likely a small team built it not even thinking about legalities. 1. being small doesn't exempt one from following the law. 2. if that is the case, someone at Lego didn't do their homework during the acquisition.
  - cuddlyogre 4y ago
    You ascribe a level of malice that is unwarranted. 1. No. But laws are rarely written in a way that people without a lawyer can understand. Do you fully understand every EULA you agree to? Do you keep up with changes to the licenses of everything you use on a daily basis and immediately update your processes based on any changes you don't like? Do you have the expectation that everyone can do such a thing? Is there the expectation that everyone have a lawyer ready to review everything they touch? 2. They probably didn't. But Bricklink has such a footing, they likely thought it would be worth whatever hassles came up. Lots of people didn't like the idea of Bricklink being bought by LEGO. Partly because it increases LEGO's control over the building block industry. Partly because it seemed to have come out of nowhere.
    - 4y ago

by fwlr 4y ago

app4soft 4y ago

Archived copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20210301135016/https://devtalk.blender.org/t/on-what-version-of-cycles-is-bricklink-stud-ios-eyesight-renderer-based/17566 http://web.archive.org/web/20210301135016/https://devtalk.bl... From comment #3 in this discussion: > Got bored, did some digging in their binary, they built using some of our our svn libraries (I know it’s our libs since the paths embedded for some of the source files are local to my computer :slight_smile: ) which makes it easy to track down > they ship openimageio 1.7.15 which means the code is likely from somewhere in between 2017-06-04 and 2018-08-27 which is indeed around the 2.79 time frame. > It would have been nice if they kept the code opensource, so it could get all the improvements blender makes easily, but they seemingly chose not to go that way. which is somewhat strange since they clearly lifted the GPL licensed bf_blenlib [1] so the closed source nature of eyesight is odd to say the least. > [1] the executable contains strings like <inline>Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to Blender installation Dir! , Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to first valid drive! Path might be invalid!</inline> and <inline>BLI_dynstr_append text too long or format error.</inline> that can only could have come from bf_blenlib

sidewndr46 4y ago
Is there precedent for that holding in court? Saying something like "I put this unusual string in my software & it is also in theirs" seems pretty useless from a legal perspective.
- wingmanjd 4y ago
  Don't some map makers put ghost towns or roads that don't actually exist in their own maps as a sort of fingerprinting method? Unless you actually visit that particular spot, one might not know and inadvertently copy the proprietary map data,
  - meshaneian 4y ago
    > kgeist 8 hours ago > Reminds me of "trap streets" on maps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
- paledot 4y ago
  On the contrary, that seems more likely to be understood by a non-technical audience than any amount of decompiler output. Doesn't replace the latter, but it certainly removes a reasonable doubt.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    Yeah if the string is something like "I sidewndr46 am the copyright holder for this software", I can't really see how it would be possible for a vendor to say they just happened to put that in their own independently created product.
- cma 4y ago
  "Unusual string" seems a lot more innocuous than unusual string referring to the product as another copywrited work by name which contains the same unusual string.
- kgeist 4y ago
  Reminds me of "trap streets" on maps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street >In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential plagiarists of the map There's a section on legal issues in the article
ofchnofc 4y ago
[dead]
app4soft 4y ago
UPDATE: Additional context from Orion Pobursky[0], the LDraw.org's webmaster: > The https://Stud.io https://Stud.io has been historically bad with attribution of their sources. LDraw had to contact them directly to get them to acknowledge use in their about page and most average users still don't know that the Stud.io's library is back by LDraw.[1] [0] https://wiki.ldraw.org/wiki/Meet_Orion_Pobursky https://wiki.ldraw.org/wiki/Meet_Orion_Pobursky [1] https://twitter.com/billtfish/status/1636435679076057089 https://twitter.com/billtfish/status/1636435679076057089

arp242 4y ago

There's some source code over here: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 The discussion this story links to is two years old; I don't know how much has changed or how it all fits together.

app4soft 4y ago
> There's some source code over here: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2079 But they did not mentioned that they forked Blender, thus they violates GPL. And as BrickLink Studio based on Blender code, Studio source should be licensed under GPL as well.
- arp242 4y ago
  It's not at all clear to me it is a fork.
  - pajko 4y ago
    So a derived product
    - arp242 4y ago
      Well, that's not clear at all to me either, at least not in its current state.

cuddlyogre 4y ago

I think it is important to distinguish between Blender and Cycles and Eyesight, the render engine that Studio uses that is in question. Blender is the application and Cycles is the render engine. Studio itself is a Unity application that would almost certainly be incompatible almost in its entirety with any source code they could pull from Blender. At that point they would be porting logic. Their Eyesight renderer is a separate application that looks to be a fork of Blender with everything but Cycles pulled out. COPYING.txt explains that Eyesight is based on Cycles using the Apache License v2. C:\Program Files\Studio 2.0\PhotoRealisticRenderer\win\64\license if you're curious. Not that it excuses them necessarily, but Studio was not created by LEGO. Bricklink was purchased by LEGO relatively recently and had no say in its development. It is very likely a small team built it not even thinking about legalities.

toyg 4y ago
> Bricklink was purchased by LEGO relatively recently and had no say in its development. It is very likely a small team built it not even thinking about legalities. 1. being small doesn't exempt one from following the law. 2. if that is the case, someone at Lego didn't do their homework during the acquisition.
- cuddlyogre 4y ago
  You ascribe a level of malice that is unwarranted. 1. No. But laws are rarely written in a way that people without a lawyer can understand. Do you fully understand every EULA you agree to? Do you keep up with changes to the licenses of everything you use on a daily basis and immediately update your processes based on any changes you don't like? Do you have the expectation that everyone can do such a thing? Is there the expectation that everyone have a lawyer ready to review everything they touch? 2. They probably didn't. But Bricklink has such a footing, they likely thought it would be worth whatever hassles came up. Lots of people didn't like the idea of Bricklink being bought by LEGO. Partly because it increases LEGO's control over the building block industry. Partly because it seemed to have come out of nowhere.
  - 4y ago