Affidavit

As many people know, last week there was a court hearing in the Geniatech vs. McHardy case. This was a case brought claiming a license violation of the Linux kernel in Geniatech devices in the German court of OLG Cologne.

Harald Welte has written up a wonderful summary of the hearing, I strongly recommend that everyone go read that first.

In Harald’s summary, he refers to an affidavit that I provided to the court. Because the case was withdrawn by McHardy, my affidavit was not entered into the public record. I had always assumed that my affidavit would be made public, and since I have had a number of people ask me about what it contained, I figured it was good to just publish it for everyone to be able to see it.

There are some minor edits from what was exactly submitted to the court such as the side-by-side German translation of the English text, and some reformatting around some footnotes in the text, because I don’t know how to do that directly here, and they really were not all that relevant for anyone who reads this blog. Exhibit A is also not reproduced as it’s just a huge list of all of the kernel releases in which I felt that were no evidence of any contribution by Patrick McHardy.

AFFIDAVIT

I, the undersigned, Greg Kroah-Hartman,
declare in lieu of an oath and in the
knowledge that a wrong declaration in
lieu of an oath is punishable, to be
submitted before the Court:

I. With regard to me personally:

1. I have been an active contributor to
   the Linux Kernel since 1999.

2. Since February 1, 2012 I have been a
   Linux Foundation Fellow.  I am currently
   one of five Linux Foundation Fellows
   devoted to full time maintenance and
   advancement of Linux. In particular, I am
   the current Linux stable Kernel maintainer
   and manage the stable Kernel releases. I
   am also the maintainer for a variety of
   different subsystems that include USB,
   staging, driver core, tty, and sysfs,
   among others.

3. I have been a member of the Linux
   Technical Advisory Board since 2005.

4. I have authored two books on Linux Kernel
   development including Linux Kernel in a
   Nutshell (2006) and Linux Device Drivers
   (co-authored Third Edition in 2009.)

5. I have been a contributing editor to Linux
   Journal from 2003 - 2006.

6. I am a co-author of every Linux Kernel
   Development Report. The first report was
   based on my Ottawa Linux Symposium keynote
   in 2006, and the report has been published
   every few years since then. I have been
   one of the co-author on all of them. This
   report includes a periodic in-depth
   analysis of who is currently contributing
   to Linux. Because of this work, I have an
   in-depth knowledge of the various records
   of contributions that have been maintained
   over the course of the Linux Kernel
   project.

   For many years, Linus Torvalds compiled a
   list of contributors to the Linux kernel
   with each release. There are also usenet
   and email records of contributions made
   prior to 2005. In April of 2005, Linus
   Torvalds created a program now known as
   “Git” which is a version control system
   for tracking changes in computer files and
   coordinating work on those files among
   multiple people. Every Git directory on
   every computer contains an accurate
   repository with complete history and full
   version tracking abilities.  Every Git
   directory captures the identity of
   contributors.  Development of the Linux
   kernel has been tracked and managed using
   Git since April of 2005.

   One of the findings in the report is that
   since the 2.6.11 release in 2005, a total
   of 15,637 developers have contributed to
   the Linux Kernel.

7. I have been an advisor on the Cregit
   project and compared its results to other
   methods that have been used to identify
   contributors and contributions to the
   Linux Kernel, such as a tool known as “git
   blame” that is used by developers to
   identify contributions to a git repository
   such as the repositories used by the Linux
   Kernel project.

8. I have been shown documents related to
   court actions by Patrick McHardy to
   enforce copyright claims regarding the
   Linux Kernel. I have heard many people
   familiar with the court actions discuss
   the cases and the threats of injunction
   McHardy leverages to obtain financial
   settlements. I have not otherwise been
   involved in any of the previous court
   actions.

II. With regard to the facts:

1. The Linux Kernel project started in 1991
   with a release of code authored entirely
   by Linus Torvalds (who is also currently a
   Linux Foundation Fellow).  Since that time
   there have been a variety of ways in which
   contributions and contributors to the
   Linux Kernel have been tracked and
   identified. I am familiar with these
   records.

2. The first record of any contribution
   explicitly attributed to Patrick McHardy
   to the Linux kernel is April 23, 2002.
   McHardy’s last contribution to the Linux
   Kernel was made on November 24, 2015.

3. The Linux Kernel 2.5.12 was released by
   Linus Torvalds on April 30, 2002.

4. After review of the relevant records, I
   conclude that there is no evidence in the
   records that the Kernel community relies
   upon to identify contributions and
   contributors that Patrick McHardy made any
   code contributions to versions of the
   Linux Kernel earlier than 2.4.18 and
   2.5.12. Attached as Exhibit A is a list of
   Kernel releases which have no evidence in
   the relevant records of any contribution
   by Patrick McHardy.