OSDev.org

Posted: **Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:12 pm**

So I came across something a little strange and I wanted to get the option of another OSDev website(I run osdev.org). I logged into the osdev IRC channel on Freenode and noticed one of the urls in the welcome banner is http://www.osdcom.info so I go and check it out. Reading their forums I see mention of a new OSDev Portal at http://ww2.sysbin.com/ . Going there the first thing I noticed was the OSNews rss box on the right hand side just like I used to have but osdever.net does this too and I can hardly claim any rights on the placement of a RSS reader in a web page, it just struck me as similar...

Then I notice the Bona Fide box on the left that contains the news from osdever.net. Looking at Bona Fide I don't see that their news is available as an rss feed so I'd guess some type of dynamic http & html parsing is going on(guessing here). They aren't rewritting the urls, those still go back to osdever.net.

Next interesting part is Forum Monitor (http://ww2.sysbin.com/index.php?module=fm). The first 3 forums are from my osdev.org. I've just changed forum software and urls and I can see when they updated the *monitoring* of my forums to continue working. Doing a nslookup of ww2.sysbin.com gave me the ip address of 81.176.64.43. Parsing just logs from the 15th I end up with this, http://www.osdev.org/sysbin.txt, or 3640 request of my forum. Looks like 3 seperate requests every ten minutes. The really annoying thing is that I've setup RSS and ATOM support for my forums(which they aren't using) and explicitly asked that people don't synchronzie more then once an hour.

But there is more...Going to the project list (http://ww2.sysbin.com/index.php?module=oslist) I'm presented with a very slighty modified verion of one of my old pages (http://web.archive.org/web/20030803122556/www.osdev.org/projects.jsp). The CSS names aren't even changed. I've recreated the Project List/OS Ring as a wiki page at http://www.osdev.org/wiki/index.php/Projects so their version either copied mine a while back or they hit the Way Back Machine(archive.org) too.

I'm kinda just getting back into the scene, has this happened with these forums?

Should I be:

A) Flattered and happy about them promoting my site in a way and just work with them about caching correctly.

B) Be outraged and ban their ip(firewall rule is ready and tested).

C) Just be happy that the OSDev scene has gotten big enough for this type of thing to start happening.

D) Ignore it...? (bandwidth permitting)

I get the idea of a Portal but it just seems a little to much reuse to me, I'd be really pissed if the site had lots of ads but it doesn't. My first reaction is B but I've never had anything remotely like this happen before and wanted to see if it's happened here before. I'm going to send an email to the osdever guys linking to this thread so they can chime in too.

-Chase

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:48 am**

I would personally email them asking them to sync with the rss and spend more time between requests, as well asking them to think about maybe putting some effort into making their own pages rather than ripping off everyone else's designs. Given no response or a negative response within a week or so I'd ban their IP.

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:40 am**

I wouldn't complain about them syndicating your RSS - so long as that is what they use, and they drop their request interval considerably. That's what RSS is for, and OSDEV is a reasonably specialised and small hobby community, so news is likely to run into each other (sites are more likely to have the same news as others, etc), so that's to be expected.

As for ripping off your designs though, I would very definitely complain about that if you can prove reasonably that it's yours. That's a major no-no in my book (code, documentation etc may be open but I feel that people should at least come up with their own 'look-and-feel').

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:59 am**

Midas wrote: I wouldn't complain about them syndicating your RSS - so long as that is what they use, and they drop their request interval considerably. That's what RSS is for, and OSDEV is a reasonably specialised and small hobby community, so news is likely to run into each other (sites are more likely to have the same news as others, etc), so that's to be expected.

Sorry, I probably didn't make that clear. They aren't using the RSS, they've been scraping my forum's HTML every 10 minutes since before I had RSS support installed and even back on my last forum software. Heres a snippet from my apache logs:

Code: Select all

81.176.64.43 - - [19/Jun/2006:05:27:58 -0500] "GET /phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3&start=0&topicdays=7 HTTP/1.1" 200 20134

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:10 am**

Chase@OSDev wrote:
Midas wrote: I wouldn't complain about them syndicating your RSS - so long as that is what they use, and they drop their request interval considerably. That's what RSS is for, and OSDEV is a reasonably specialised and small hobby community, so news is likely to run into each other (sites are more likely to have the same news as others, etc), so that's to be expected.
Sorry, I probably didn't make that clear. They aren't using the RSS, they've been scraping my forum's HTML every 10 minutes since before I had RSS support installed and even back on my last forum software. Heres a snippet from my apache logs:
Code: Select all
81.176.64.43 - - [19/Jun/2006:05:27:58 -0500] "GET /phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3&start=0&topicdays=7 HTTP/1.1" 200 20134

Ah no, you were quite clear (or at least, I knew what you meant). I wasn't, on the other hand! I meant that were they to use the RSS at a reasonable interval then I wouldn't object to that.

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:22 pm**

So on the advice of several people I sent out this in email to the 2 addresses I could find related to controlling sysbin.com.

Hello,

I've recently came across your OSDev Portal at ww2.sysbin.com.

I've noticed 2 pages that include content from osdev.org. The first is your Forum Monitor. Looking at my server logs I see that you have been parsing the topic list of 3 of my forums every 10 minutes. Unless a website has setup some type of content syndication it is usually polite to ask if it's ok to do this first. With the latest version of osdev.org I've setup both RSS and ATOM support for my forums. My intention when setting up RSS support was mostly for end users but if you'd like to include a RSS reader of my forums on your webpage I just ask that you follow the same request I have of everyone, mainly don't make a request more then once an hour.

With my RSS feed you can choose what forums you want topic lists from so you only have to make one HTTP request and you can cache your previous results and only request new topics. Please see my post at http://www.osdev.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=675 .

The other content that came from my site is located at http://ww2.sysbin.com/index.php?module=oslist. I have discontinued that version/formatting of the project list but you can still see the source of the list located at your site by viewing my old list at http://web.archive.org/web/200308031225 ... ojects.jsp. I've implemented a new wiki version of the project list that is located at http://www.osdev.org/wiki/index.php/Projects. If you would like to become a mirror of the project list I wouldn't mind that as long as you add a disclaimer at the top of the page stating that you are a mirror and where the original is located at and of course don't synchronize excessively. It's best for the entire OSDev community if we try to maintain a single project list.

Thanks,
-Chase
OSDev.org

As suggested by a couple of people I'll just wait for a reponse at this point. If I don't hear anything back or the reponse indicates they aren't willing to work with me then I'll have to take further action.

Thanks for the feedback!

Posted: **Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:12 pm**

hmm, well i saw this a few weeks back and it gave me a good tickle. I noticed they ripped your old OS list, which was lame of them.

I dont mind them admiring BF since it is quite a nice gesture, but when they start abusing our content and scraping our code, that makes me a little upset. I would monitor their queries and if it gets excessive, ban the ip. Excessive is relative to you, so you decide.

These 2 sites arent hugely popular. I'd say MT forums are number one place to visit for help, osdever.net main place to find tutorials and docs, and osdev.org is the main place for a watered down mix of it all with what use to be a kool OS list, until it died(but wiki is back eh?).

That said, it's not that destructive IMHO because they aren't exactly reaping all the benefits from our hard work.

Truth is open source, so goes my motto, but in this application i would say that knowledge is open source. If anything their linking to our content or mentioning our name is good for err, brand i guess(for lack of a better term).

Them stealing your OS list is ultra uber lame though. That's why we have forums like these so everyone will know how lame they are? If they at least gave credit to osdev.org that would be semi-fair, but a email request to do so would have been even kinder.

Posted: **Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:56 am**

I noticed looking at the referels from my own web site that http://ajaxdever.net/forum/forum.htm seems to be a mirror of the Mega Tokyo forums! not sure if its the same owners but seems odd!

Posted: **Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:15 am**

mr. xsism wrote: hmm, well i saw this a few weeks back and it gave me a good tickle. I noticed they ripped your old OS list, which was lame of them.

I can almost understand because I had it down so long because that old implementation was starting to show it's limits. Too many OSes (that's a good thing) to keep updated by myself. I think a wiki is going to work out much better.

mr. xsism wrote: I dont mind them admiring BF since it is quite a nice gesture, but when they start abusing our content and scraping our code, that makes me a little upset. I would monitor their queries and if it gets excessive, ban the ip. Excessive is relative to you, so you decide.

To me excesive is every 10 minutes. Just going by the "norm" of what sites that provide syndication using RSS you typically see a minimum of 20 to 60 minutes.

mr. xsism wrote: These 2 sites arent hugely popular.

Just want to clarify here, the guys at http://www.osdcom.info/ haven't done anything I'd object to and have been helpful.

mr. xsism wrote:I'd say MT forums are number one place to visit for help, osdever.net main place to find tutorials and docs, and osdev.org is the main place for a watered down mix of it all with what use to be a kool OS list, until it died(but wiki is back eh?).

Sometimes I feel like the guy from The Quest for the Holy Grail.....BUT I'M NOT DEAD YET!

mr. xsism wrote: That said, it's not that destructive IMHO because they aren't exactly reaping all the benefits from our hard work.

Yeah, after thinking about it a while and seeing peoples recommendations from various places I think I would have been angry if they had lots of adds but now that I have RSS stuff I the only thing I can be angry about is over synchronization.

mr. xsism wrote: Truth is open source, so goes my motto, but in this application i would say that knowledge is open source. If anything their linking to our content or mentioning our name is good for err, brand i guess(for lack of a better term).

So spread OSDev content by an means possible....follow up post about this latter.

mr. xsism wrote: Them stealing your OS list is ultra uber lame though. That's why we have forums like these so everyone will know how lame they are? If they at least gave credit to osdev.org that would be semi-fair, but a email request to do so would have been even kinder.

I've started talking with them and hopefully eveything is going to work out. I think in the long run it's just cultural difference in what accepted reuse is. OS Development seems to bring in a more diverse group of people then any other website I've run(lots of pretty colors in the webalizer pie chart) so it's probably something that's best delt with by enabling it then by trying to stop it.

Posted: **Sun Jun 25, 2006 11:38 am**

spacedsteve wrote: I noticed looking at the referels from my own web site that http://ajaxdever.net/forum/forum.htm seems to be a mirror of the Mega Tokyo forums! not sure if its the same owners but seems odd!

Looks to me like to be another site for the forum stuff that Mr. Xsism and Co are working on. I tried and my login info for this site works there too so it's legit from what I can tell or I just gave away my password

. I actually like the layout used there better then the one on forums.osdever.net.

Posted: **Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:22 pm**

So I know I was one of the early adopters what has now become the defacto OSNews RSS box on OSDev websites but has anyone noticed how little OSDev related content makes onto OSNews lately? Looking right now the first 3 stories are, new MS Vista build, new .Net stuff, web-based MS Office.

Would anybody be interested in helping generate a OSDev News RSS feed to be used by end-users and incorporated into other websites? Information like the IPC article that was mentioned here today(used that as some test data)? It probably wouldn't be super high volume but atleast it'd be keep on the subject of OSDev.

p.s. Everything worked out with sysbin, they replaced the non-original content and synchronize at a resonable time now.

Posted: **Tue Jun 27, 2006 1:20 am**

Would anybody be interested in helping generate a OSDev News RSS feed to be used by end-users and incorporated into other websites? Information like the IPC article that was mentioned here today(used that as some test data)? It probably wouldn't be super high volume but at least it'd be keep on the subject of OSDev.

How would that work? How would one submit stories they find? I would certainly be interested in reading something like that, especially if it had a comments system attached to it..

Or do you mean something along the lines of just an RSS feed that is included in every osdev website and links directly to the story, be it OSnews or whatever?

Posted: **Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:15 am**

@Chase:
I don't know the details of how RSS works (with phpBB), but what if you made a subforum on osdev.org used for news posting, then have the RSS feed on topics from that forum. It would allow for comments too, since it would be a part of the forum..

Posted: **Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:24 am**

My test implementation works by combining forum software, a RSS extension to the forum software, and a seperate php page with a RSS reader.

I created a "OSDev News" section on the forum software. It has 2 forums:

1) The official news forum - Requires membership to some type of "news posting" group to start a topic or thread. Basically the first post in a thread is the news article. Any registered user can reply to an existing thread(comments on an article).

2) The news submission forum - Any registered user can submit(post) a news article. No replies are allowed in this forum since we'd want to save the discussion for the official repost.

The OSDev News RSS would be generated automatically using the first post in each topic or thread in the offical news forum. I think something like the above setup would be needed because if it was a straight forum->RSS setup there would be lots of "3l33t OS Mega Alpha 5 is da bomb!" type posts and no one is going to really want to incorporate that into their website. (It's possible to setup RSS from a normal Project Announcement forum but thats not related here).

Comparing it to something that a lot of people might already know, slashdot. There would be a lot more Article Approvers for OSDev News type stuff. The osdev community has a more specific focus then something like slashdot so I think we can have more approvers and still stay on topic. Only thing missing would be comment points moderation but I don't think it's needed. The article submission would actually be more open because the submissions are viewable by all. I don't think every OSDev site combined has the traffic to implement a Digg.com type system, there wouldn't be enough voting users to filter out the "noise" so this is what I came up with.

Of course you could added the OSDev News RSS to a personal RSS reader(I use Thunderbird) but it could get used for other websites, maybe even other programming websites which might cause more interest in OSDev. The OSDev News RSS would be good as a side bar like a lot of sites are doing with OSNews right now but you could even have a deticated OSDev News page(look at my site for an example). Thoughts?

Posted: **Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:23 am**

@chase: Did you notice that on the bottom of the OSlist there is a copyright notice:

Copyright ? 2006 by ww2.sysbin.com

They don't mention you as the author, and they copyright it to themselves. I would send them a cease and desist order, telling them to either remove the list, or credit you as the author...

Just my 2 cents.

-Stephen

OSDev.org

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