Steve spreads the fud.. then FPC bites his bait and publicly admits that fpc source is or could be or must be tainted... bad bad bad move. Go to law school children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Bad bad bad statements and admissions by fpc team and fpc community:

"This enabled us to find more cases where code may have originally come from or be based on Delphi/Kylix code. "

...

"It was brought to our attention by a ex-Borland employee (Steve Trefethen), that FPC contains some stolen code from Delphi. Especially Delphi 4 & 5."

That's exactly what Steve the manipulator wants you to say.. this is his plan and goal.. to get you to say things like this. It is like a troll manipulating you into a flame.

This is a threat that the bible may contain backwards messages.. and you cannot prove to us that the bible messages are false.. they are true until proven otherwise..

"I strongly doubt that Borland/Codegear will sue the FPC team (even in  
case of copyright infringement). It would be a very bad advertisement  
campaign. In fact, I think the best for them is to do what they are  
doing:  
* A free Turbo Delphi (so that beginners make use of it instead of  
   using Lazarus/FPC).  
* Fuzzy threats like the one reported in this thread (so that  
   companies make use of Delphi instead of Lazarus/FPC). Here, the  
   threat is much more efficient than the attack. " 

Steve Trefethen manipulates the freepascal code to look more like delphi code and fools us into thinking the code looks exactly similar by editing it to look similar.. he is looking for backwards bible messages and manipulating the bible to show devil.. and the FPC team and community is falling for it!

"...modifications made...

    * Renamed variables to match FP version
    * changed case to match FP version (try -> Try)
    * differences and spacing and line wrap to match FP version 
"

He modified the code, renamed variables, and posted it on the net to look as though the code was similar.. by putting it side by side as if it was a diff view. But it is not a diff view.. it is his manipulated code. Visual manipulation. He took algorithms that programmers write similarly.... and manipulated them to look exactly similar visually.

Steve closes off all comments to the first blog posting so that we can no longer comment. Censorship.. and then he opens up a brand new blog post which shows a link to manipulated source code by him. He has purposely manipulated it to look more like valid evidence that FPC has used copyrighted RTL. He claims it is proof that FPC code is tainted.. even though it is not evidence or proof. He then says vague things like I believe it is the evidence or in my opinion it is the evidence. He previously implied that it wasn't proof but was just his opinion and that it could possibly be tainted.

The code he shows also has nothing to do with the original code piece he was talking about which is the threads implementation... it also has nothing to do with his original claim that the fpc source code uses include files because they want to obfuscate the sources. This was to divert attention of the reader and manipulate delphi people or freepascal newbies who didn't know why freepascal had been designed with OS/platform include files..

Then the FPC team naively emails Steve and starts admitting that it is possible some of the code could be tainted. What? Bad Bad Bad move. Admitting that the code could be tainted to the manipulator who wanted you to admit this? This is like saying 'yes I killed her' in court even though you didn't kill her and there is no 100 percent evidence to support it. So then smart Steve takes screenshots of the admissions and posts them on his blog for the world to see.. great move on the FPC team's part! Admit to something that you are not guilty and not proven guilty of! He manipulated everyone with a pea sized brain into thinking that FPC is now 100 percent guilty of code tainting. Me, the guy without a pea sized brain, didn't admit to anything! Just explained to him why he was WRONG about the obfuscation explanation about include files.

I guess no one ever took law school... but any one with common sense would never email someone and admit to the code being tainted.. nor would anyone start ADMITTING THINGS PUBLICALLY on a PUBLIC MAILING LIST. I never took law school but I'm smart enough not to ADMIT publically that 'we are GUILTY! Now we will do our best to find and remove the code (even though there is NONE that is guilty, it was just a manipulation tactic that fooled people into thinking there was some! Then they went a long with it and starting saying 'okay so there is some let's remove it'. That is not the case. It was manipulation. That's what he WANTED out of this whole blog scam, and you all fell for it.).

http://www.mail-archive.com/fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org/msg10977.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/fpc-devel@lists.freepascal.org/msg09072.html
etc.

What you are SUPPOSED say is "that is NOT tainted code, however since you are worried that it is tainted we will remove the code from the FPC RTL/FCL and we will replace it with brand new code anyway.. just to make you happy".

Folks, please don't send emails and publicly admit (or imply) on mailing lists that code is tainted.. Don't even send emails that partially imply that code is tainted if you are DEFENDING THE FACT that the code is not tainted! Any lawyer would slap you across the head and hit you with his keyboard.

Code that has been MANIPULATED TO LOOK more like the delphi code by steve, is NOT tainted.. it has been manipulated to look that way since Steve already has lost the argument about the include files and the obfuscation naivety. He locked the comments on the post because he lost, then he opened up a new post with manipulated evidence to divert your attention away from the original post.. since the original post he made a fool of himself telling lies. This is a simple censorship/manipulation and diversion tactic.

Any dummy in a court of law would be sent to jail for ADMITTING a crime and saying 'I think I may have killed the lady but not sure... my fingerprints don't actually match really well to the fingerprints shown here so it is possible I didn't'.

Please, please, please.. don't be a dummy! Don't be so naive! To all the FPC team and all the FPC community.. stop being such a weakling and stop getting sucked into Steve's manipulation game.. he put this blog post up to scare people away from FPC using manipulation and FUD tactics.

Some History

The reality is the include files have nothing to do with obfuscating the sources.. they are there because of cross platform support:

  -Fi/$FPCTARGET/
  /win32/ 
  /linux/ 
  /bsd/ 
  etc.

Go to law school

If you find something that MIGHT BE TAINTED, then don't ADMIT THAT IT IS TAINTED.. for creeps sake. Proclaim that it is not tainted because it does not look the same, and proclaim that Steve manipulated it anyway to make it look more similar, since he did.. BUT then remove the code anyway as a precaution, but still not giving in and admitting the code is tainted.. because it is NOT proven it is tainted! It was just manipulated to look that way! Don't go admitting you killed someone if you didn't kill someone.. even if there is possible evidence that you looked slightly like the guy that was charged since you had the same sort of hair cut but weren't as tall. Even though the sketch of the criminal is vague and even though you didn't kill anyone, you admit to the crime? Come on! Please!

Seen This Before?

Smarten up, please! All of you.

Understand that just because 'similar code and algorithms' are found in the source code, does NOT MEAN that the similar code was ever tainted or taken from borland.. it is just an extra precaution even if addressing an invalid claim! i.e. if Linux/IBM has to pay SCO some time and go in and change the Linux sources to shut them up, even though SCO is wrong.. then fine.. but that doesn't make SCO right. For example BSD changed some of the source code so that it was less like the AT&T Unix.

And guess what? I recently made a function called IsNum and IsAlph a year or so ago. Then about a year later, for the first time, I found someone else's function called IsAlph on the internet! I was startled. He had created a function just like mine but we had never seen each other's code. I also saw one called IsAlphNum, which is the same name as a function I made a year ago too! And it does exactly the same thing.. but slightly different code. And again we'd never seen each other's code. Even though someone could have chosen a creative name such as IsAlphaNumber or IsAlphaNumeric we both chose IsAlphNum! Why not one person choose AlphaNum and the other choose AlphNum? Because we are programmers and smart people think alike! I'd never seen this IsAlphNum function name before yet I chose it.

Programmers often think up similar things. I also made a unit called whtm.pas and fileutil.pas only to find that someone else had already made units just like that. I had to rename them.. because some people were using both units and a conflict was occurring. Why wasn't one called FileUtils and one called FileUtil and one called FileUtilitites? Because programmer's think alike and you'd be amazed...

I also wrote a StrLoadFile function and found someone else had made a File2String and String2File functions just like mine, with nearly exactly the same code. Both of our code was open source.. so no reason for us to steal each others code. Even though I'd never seen the guy's code before we ended up with such similar functions that it was startling. I've even seen GetCgiVar in fcl units that look an aweful lot like some GetCgiVar functions that I've made.. yet I'd never seen the fcl code before. ANd you know what? I could manipulate these to make it look the same by editing the variable names, indentation, capitalization. ANY ONE CAN GO LOOKING IN THE LED ZEPPELIN SONG (STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN) PLAYED BACKWARDS, AND CAN CLAIM THAT THERE ARE MESSAGES FROM THE DEVIL EMBEDDED IN THE MUSIC IF YOU REWIND IT AND LISTEN CAREFULLY AFTER EDITING AND DUBBING THE SOUND SLIGHTLY AND TURN THE BASS UP AND TREBLE DOWN AND SLOW IT DOWN TO THE RIGHT SPEED JUST AT THE RIGHT PLACE... AND... FISHING IS FOR FISHERS AND...FISHING IS FOR FISHERS!