editors: Thread: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Process-Monitor-HOWTO-9.html

Looking at this document, it is little more than a brief description of a 
program that he wrote and a pointer to the guys web site where he will sell 
you a copy for $15 "to cover his ISP costs".  As a point, he gives a 
detailed description of his program with options and explanations, (as well 
as the note that it "is comparable to big commercial products which costs 
about $80,000US").

This is obviously false, (unless comparable means, "Compared to this big 
commercial product, this is a piece of crap").  The thing is so lame it has 
to be nohupped, it does not background/disassociate.

He has installed relays at all the typical free websites that spammers put 
them at, and they all relay to his web site which is on a radio link.

 >Linux goodies main site is at http://www.milkywaygalaxy.freeservers.com
 >Mirror sites are at - angelfire, geocities, virtualave, Fortunecity,
 >Freewebsites, Tripod, 101xs, 50megs,

With all of the site names relaying to his site.  The Linux Goodies are all 
for sale, by the way.  Many are a mix of GPLed software and things he 
claims a license for.

Eventually you pass all the ads for things he wants to sell you and you get 
here:

http://24.221.230.253/cppsrc.html

Which includes this, which is what he is actually pointing to out of the 
LDP item:

 >Buy 'Source code of Process Monitor program" for US $14.99 (to cover
 >code-maintenance/ISP/Internet charges). Please ignore what Paypal say's as
 >shippping and handling $4.99. The software itself is GNU/GPL but you can
 >charge for the media or ISP/Internet connections.

He then gives paypal/Ebay instructions.

It seems to me that this is a clear misuse of the LDP.

This was discovered by someone else who is a member of the FLUX Linux 
User's Group.  I'm blind copying him on this.

By the way, he seems not to understand the UNIX Process model.  As an 
example, he has the program he advertises repeatedly wake up to "check the 
process".  I guess he does not understand wait(2) or SIGCLD or any of the 
other mechanisms that would eliminate his having to wake up to monitor a 
process that he started in the first place.  The reality seems that he 
wants to sell you a C program that does not do as much as a 20 line shell 
script might.  My point is that this document gives false impressions about 
what needs to be done to monitor a child process in UNIX/Linux.

--
War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things. The decayed and 
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is 
worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to 
fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a 
miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made so by the 
exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill
Nick Simicich - ####@####.####

On Tuesday 04 June 2002 06:17, Nick Simicich wrote:
> Eventually you pass all the ads for things he wants to sell you and
> you get here:
>
> http://24.221.230.253/cppsrc.html
>
> Which includes this, which is what he is actually pointing to out
> of the

This, my friend, is the same author who wrote the infamous PHP-HOWTO, 
Alavoor Vasudevan.  Alavoor just made an update to the PHP-HOWTO on 
May 30, 2002, although viewing the source in CVS didn't show what the 
changes were.  I remember watching an email from either the submit or 
the discuss mailing list from the author, but couldn't locate it.

> LDP item:
>  >Buy 'Source code of Process Monitor program" for US $14.99 (to
>  > cover code-maintenance/ISP/Internet charges). Please ignore what
>  > Paypal say's as shippping and handling $4.99. The software
>  > itself is GNU/GPL but you can charge for the media or
>  > ISP/Internet connections.

I cannot for the life of me understand why the author would charge 
for his source file, when it is freely available in the LDP CVS 
Repository.  

> It seems to me that this is a clear misuse of the LDP.

This may be a mis-use of the license.  The author chose to use the 
GPL.  According to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html .  
The full license is not stated in the documentation.  In fact the 
author has indicated in his copyright notice that the GPL is as per 
the LDP.  

According to the GPL & violation info, only a copyright owner can 
take action against a violation, and the author is the copyright 
owner and the violator, as the source is not being distributed freely.

Please note though, the GPL states that you may charge a fee for the 
physical act of transferring a copy.

GPL Terms & Conditions, Section 3b, says that you must charge no more 
than the cost of physically performing source distribution.  At 
$14.99 per copy, and there are several document sources for sale, 
this could be viewed as a breach of the license.

Again, I don't know why he charges so much for his source file, since 
it's free at LDP, but who has the authority to determine a fair price?

> This was discovered by someone else who is a member of the FLUX
> Linux User's Group.  I'm blind copying him on this.
>
> By the way, he seems not to understand the UNIX Process model.  As
> an example, he has the program he advertises repeatedly wake up to
> "check the process".  I guess he does not understand wait(2) or
> SIGCLD or any of the other mechanisms that would eliminate his
> having to wake up to monitor a process that he started in the first
> place.  The reality seems that he wants to sell you a C program
> that does not do as much as a 20 line shell script might.  My point
> is that this document gives false impressions about what needs to
> be done to monitor a child process in UNIX/Linux.

Although this HOWTO has a publish date of February 2002, it is using 
the Linuxdoc dtd, the links to the LDP need to be changed, and he 
needs to display the full license, whether it is GPL or GFDL.  He 
should probably do this for the PHP HOWTO as well, but after skimming 
through both of them, it looks as though they both need more 
intensive work than just the above.

Just my $0.02!

-- 
Tabatha Persad
Web: http://www.merlinmonroe.com
The Linux Counter Project Area Manager US:wa (http://counter.li.org)
Linux Documentation Project Editor (http://www.tldp.org)
Gnu Writing Movement Project Developer (http://gwm.gnu.org)

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your feedback. We are currently discussing this writer's content
on the staff list. I am forwarding your post there. Please continue to
offer this kind of feedback on any document.

I appreciate the type of feedback that you have given because it touches on
the technically inaccurate and misleading information instead of just
saying it is distatesful. This gives us grounds for possible removal
without it being a commercial or cencoring issue.

Thanks,

joy


Joy Y. Goodreau
Linux Information Developer
LDP Collections Editor
Ofc. (512) 838-4118
T/L 678-4118
####@####.####



                                                                                                                                       
                      Nick Simicich                                                                                                    
                      ####@####.####        To:       ####@####.####                                                           
                      >                        cc:                                                                                     
                                               Subject:  http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Process-Monitor-HOWTO-9.html                            
                      06/04/2002 05:17                                                                                                 
                      AM                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                       



Looking at this document, it is little more than a brief description of a
program that he wrote and a pointer to the guys web site where he will sell

you a copy for $15 "to cover his ISP costs".  As a point, he gives a
detailed description of his program with options and explanations, (as well

as the note that it "is comparable to big commercial products which costs
about $80,000US").

This is obviously false, (unless comparable means, "Compared to this big
commercial product, this is a piece of crap").  The thing is so lame it has

to be nohupped, it does not background/disassociate.

He has installed relays at all the typical free websites that spammers put
them at, and they all relay to his web site which is on a radio link.

 >Linux goodies main site is at http://www.milkywaygalaxy.freeservers.com
 >Mirror sites are at - angelfire, geocities, virtualave, Fortunecity,
 >Freewebsites, Tripod, 101xs, 50megs,

With all of the site names relaying to his site.  The Linux Goodies are all

for sale, by the way.  Many are a mix of GPLed software and things he
claims a license for.

Eventually you pass all the ads for things he wants to sell you and you get

here:

http://24.221.230.253/cppsrc.html

Which includes this, which is what he is actually pointing to out of the
LDP item:

 >Buy 'Source code of Process Monitor program" for US $14.99 (to cover
 >code-maintenance/ISP/Internet charges). Please ignore what Paypal say's
as
 >shippping and handling $4.99. The software itself is GNU/GPL but you can
 >charge for the media or ISP/Internet connections.

He then gives paypal/Ebay instructions.

It seems to me that this is a clear misuse of the LDP.

This was discovered by someone else who is a member of the FLUX Linux
User's Group.  I'm blind copying him on this.

By the way, he seems not to understand the UNIX Process model.  As an
example, he has the program he advertises repeatedly wake up to "check the
process".  I guess he does not understand wait(2) or SIGCLD or any of the
other mechanisms that would eliminate his having to wake up to monitor a
process that he started in the first place.  The reality seems that he
wants to sell you a C program that does not do as much as a 20 line shell
script might.  My point is that this document gives false impressions about

what needs to be done to monitor a child process in UNIX/Linux.

--
War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is
worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to
fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a
miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made so by the
exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill
Nick Simicich - ####@####.####

On Tuesday 04 June 2002 23:52, you wrote:
> I think that you can charge what you want for the item.  And you
> can include source in the item if you want to.  Ala Redhat.  I
> believe that the section you quoted was for what you can charge for
> source when you have already sold a copy of the item.

> I don't think he is in violation of the GPL.  It is odd that his
> howto points to his copy of this code rather than to the freely
> available one.

Correct, although I wonder if the author would be better served by 
using the GFDL rather than GPL which is more appropriate for software 
than documentation.  The exception would be if he has some program 
code that he's written.  In that case, if I were the author, I would 
apply GPL for the application, and GFDL for the documentation.

I have no issue with charging for the documentation, but I would not 
want to be the user who paid for it and then found out it was 
available from CVS!

To each his own, I guess!

-- 
Tabatha Persad
Web: http://www.merlinmonroe.com
The Linux Counter Project Area Manager US:wa (http://counter.li.org)
Linux Documentation Project Editor (http://www.tldp.org)
Gnu Writing Movement Project Developer (http://gwm.gnu.org)