Topic: SolidCoin 2 Release - Monday 10th October 23:35 UTC - page 4. (Read 21322 times)

Lying isn't a bannable offense, but it's not a good idea, either. If we ever ask you something and you lie to us, we are forced to ignore your statement and only use whatever other evidence is available to us. In fact, we usually won't even bother talking to you unless we feel that your side of the story might shed some light on things and we have enough evidence to take an action, anyway.

Again, lies for the sake of trolling are still bannable. For example, if you lie about someone being a scammer, or if you pretend your account was hacked and waste administrator time having it recovered. Pretty much any lie that causes us to pointlessly waste time will result in a ban. Otherwise, lying is fair game.

I agree. I'm not sure why lying to mods is not a bannable offense. If you don't punish people for lying to you, then why would anyone tell you the truth if they have something to hide? It doesn't make sense to me. If anything, I think lying to mods is the worse than just trolling. When someone's trolling and it bothers people, people can just ignore them. If someone is outright lying and trying to defraud others, how is that different than being a scammer?

Of course, I'm not saying that CoinHunter is indeed lying. But if he (or anyone else) is caught lying to mods, they should be punished. Maybe give them a scammer label.

Alas, I can't make policy decisions. Post in Meta where theymos will hear you.

I think lying to community members about your cryptocurrency should be a bannable offense— after all, if you don't do so you're just enabling people to defraud others since people make guesses about the value of those currencies based in part on the claims people make.

It's not a double-standard. Had BCX lied about his attack, he would have been trolling. If CH is lying, then he just pirating software, and that has nothing to do with the forum. As for why we'd try our hardest not to ban CoinHunter, that's because we don't want to EVER ban people here, especially for something as stupid as this. As I'm not an administrator, though, I can't say for certain what would happen.

Lying to mods is not a bannable offense.

Let me put on my tinfoil hat and say that something smells fishy here.

Not necessarily. That'd depend on what our lawyers say. Of course, I'd hate to have theymos hire a lawyer from our forum improvement fund, so it'd be best if we never knew.

Seriously though, what else could he possibly say?

CoinHunter says that he's licensed, so unless Oracle (AND ONLY ORACLE) specifically tells us otherwise, I consider this matter closed.

If anything happens to Dallas, we can still move it to Helsinki

Both whois and traceroute give Texas based locations.  Unless I missed some reasonably major news, last I knew that was USA and not Finland.

I thought the forum was based in Finland.

The forum is US based.  If you want to maintain the protection it offers service providers, you need to follow that.   The best advice for that is you don't act like copyright police and only act on dcma take down notices, which must be given by the copyright holder or an authorized agent of them.

Take it easy. It is highly unlikely that Oracle will go after you. Unlike Silk Road there's no criminal activity involved, this is at worst a small commercial dispute that would most likely still fit under the small-claims rules.

I speak about this as somebody who "illegally distributed" some information from the Oracle Technology Network. When I was contacted by Oracle legal they wanted us to add the proper (TM),(R)&(C) signs after their trademarks. Those guys are smart, they don't go after the pikers and they understand how building up a software business takes time and many beta releases before actually going commercial. It took us several years to go from "illegal distributors" to "gold partner".

It is quite incorrect to make direct comparisons between Microsoft and Oracle as far as licensing goes. With Oracle you can still register for free and download fully functional non-expiring top-of-the-line database system. All you have to do is click the check-mark that says "I will use it for R&D purposes".

I'll finish by emphasizing that my post is about the forum, not about the Solidcoin software and its distribution.

Ouch. Smart move by cryptoxchange to drop sc2 as they could have been in legal trouble.

I do not believe that would satisfy the Oracle license.  The license requires complete source code for any software which uses the database.

Also even if the source code is included in the future it would merely make future versions compliant.  It doesn't "undo" the fact that Solid Coin project has committed widespread software piracy.  They recklessly included others in that piracy by not warning users of the risk before they downloaded the software.  

Edited:  to reduce sarcasm and snarkiness.

Are you trying to kill this forum? I've told you why it was bad to pursue this, but you have persisted. Now that I have read your reply, I may be legally obligated to do exactly what you asked. Of course, CoinHunter doesn't really have to tell me the truth. However, if we are ever approached by Oracle with information that contradicts his response, we might be legally obligated to ban his account.

God damn it.

I understand completely that you can't act without confirmation.

You could ask him.  Users of bitcointalk have a right to know if they are engaging in piracy when downloading SolidCoin client.  

While I may not be fond of Coin Hunter I doubt he would directly lie to a mod.  He tends to obfuscate, mislead, providing incomplete information and change the topic a lot but to my knowledge he rarely lies.  If he does lie and it is later confirmed to be a lie in the future I would assume that would be ground for a ban.

The question "Have you obtained a commercial license from Oracle to redistribute the Berkeley Database with Solid Coin 2.0?" could resolve this question and ensure Bitcointalk users aren't engaging in piracy because they aren't informed of the risks.

Again, I can't make that assumption, as unlikely as it may be to be wrong, without proof. At the end of the day, all it would do is cause more work for the mods and remove a few links. We wouldn't ban CH, since this would just be considered a single infraction. We also wouldn't ban discussing SolidCoin. In many ways, the topics would become quite similar to Silk Road threads, and I HATE Silk Road threads since that means I always have to read every post to make sure nobody starts linking to it, or otherwise tell people how to find it, and also that nobody mentions specific deals.

Yes I am sure PiracyCoin uses BDB.  I used a hex editor and opened the dat files.  They match Berkeley DB format.  I used Oracle's tool db_dump to dump the contents of wallet.dat file.  It is indeed valid Berkeley DB.  He didn't even change the structure very much from Bitcoin.  Both the file/folder structure and internal database structure are nearly identical to Bitcoin.

It is possible albiet highly improbable that he has a license but it is my understanding that a commercial licenses from Oracle start in tens of thousands of dollars.  Had SolidCoin community obtained such a high value license one would imagine there would be something, a post, a blog entry, a forum thread, a press release, a line in the FAQ, something.  My guess is Real Solid didn't even realize he couldn't ripoff other people's work, make it close source and keep using BDB for free.  Berkeley DB is Oracle commercial property.  Due to the roots of the project Oracle left an exception to encourage OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS not closed source and proprietary solutions.  While you are right I can't disprove a negative I can use this thread to seek confirmation or denial from someone (other than Oracle) who would know.

So I am asking it unambiguously:

Coinhunter have you obtained a commercial license to distribute Berkeley DB in SolidCoin 2.0?  
Potential users have a right to know if they are engaging in piracy by downloading software that you unlawfully bundled with Commercial Oracle software.

On edit:
Obtained a pricelist from Oracle.  The cheapest license available for Berkeley Db is $800 per CPU
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf

If anyone wants to verify it themselves db_dump is an Oracle tool to dump the contents of any Berkeley database.  It is part of the berkeley db development package here (annoyingly Oracle makes you signup first)
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/berkeleydb/downloads/index.html

So with 1,200? CPU in SolidCoin network that would mean CoinHunter either paid Oracle ~$1 million or has already engaged in $1 million of software piracy.