[TAG] Talkback:128/saha.html (A case of copyright violation / plagiarism ?)

[Thomas Adam]

On Sat, 07 Oct 2006 21:54:50 +0530 Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose at gnu.org>
wrote:

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> Hello everybody,
> Recently I came across the article #128 by Amit Saha [1] and found it
> extremely amusing in the sense that it seemed to be a plagiarised
> version of a very well known article by tcpdump / libpcap guru Tim
> Carstens [2].

Well, there's no infringement of copyright happening given the cited
reference you've given is in the public domain anyway (i.e. there's no
explicit mention of that work as being copyrighted by the authors even
though they're listed).

> While I understand that Saha provided a link back to the original
> source in his article, but I fail to understand the use of such an
> article. 

You're welcome to your opinion, of course.  But that's all it is.  ;)

> The so-called newer version of the article is in no way
> better than the original one. Also, I believe this brings bad name to
> the Linux Gazette. Thus I humbly request the LG editors to look into
> the matter and take some action if possible.

It won't bring us a bad name per se.  All we can do is mention as an
addendum in next month's LG the fact that this has happened.  "Fixing"
any thing retroactively is not an option, since the mirrors of LG will
already have synched, and many don't resynch their entire base -- they
just get the latest copy of the release.

It's bot my judgement call, but possibly adding the necessary phrasings
at the top of the original article and contacting the relevant parties
asking them if the use of their code is acceptable is probably what
will happen.

-- Thomas Adam