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Chinese 8088-based laptop system with pirated 8088 BIOS

sergey

sergey

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Silicon Forest, Oregon, USA
Recently it came to my attention that a Chinese company is selling 8088-based laptops on AliExpress. At least according to a screenshot posted on the AliExpress product page, it appears that the system runs a modified version of my 8088 BIOS (https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios). The BIOS is open source, so I wouldn't mind them or anyone else using it in their products, commercial or not. Unfortunately these guys removed my copyright and the GPL license. They also obviously don't comply with the GPL license, that requires the source code of derivative works to be published.

I know a few people that already ordered this system, and I hope to get a BIOS dump to further confirm my suspicions. I tried contacting the company, but they don't list any email contacts. I've sent the email to product's page DNS domain owner, with no response so far.
Perhaps it is a lot to ask, but I'd appreciate if people would refrain from ordering the products of the said company, and would not advertise their products, and in case they do a review or similar, add a disclaimer that the product uses pirated BIOS... My hope that some public pressure would make the manufacturer/seller reconsider their behavior

Boot screen of my 8088 BIOS running on a Micro 8088 system:
Micro8088_BIOS_Boot.jpg

Boot screen of the Chinese laptop:
Chinese_Book8088_BIOS.jpg
 
I know how you feel. Last year, I developed an airsoft chrony based on an Arduino UNO. I made the (compiled) code available and now a Chinese seller sells their own version using my code. Of course, with no permission or any information that it even uses my code.

Bad for them, they were not aware of all features I added. When using USB not for power but for a serial connection, it shows my copyright. But even then, there's pretty much nothing you can do, sadly.
 
Unfortunately there just isn't a whole lot you can do at this point. As soon as Asia finds a product ripe to clone there is almost nothing that Western regulations can do to restrict it's manufacture, especially in China. At best they can try and restrict the import but that comes at your own legal financial costs AND that's when it's a product you own the rights to. GPL is a different monster, but isn't that the point to Open-Source? That is why most people invest the time and effort in the hopes they ARE cloned. Look at the Snark Barker. It was designed purely to substitute demand for an increasingly rare sound card and little to no expectation of a return on invested time or money. Not only was it met with positive reviews it was indeed cloned AND cloned by others, with the original "designed by" markings removed and while disappointing, it was 100% not unexpected. At this point you will just have to consider this copy to be an unauthorized branch of your work and continue working on your main distribution.
 
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I came across the news about this laptop in a DOS gaming Facebook group and immediately checked out what it was all about.

At first, I was thinking of ordering one. The price was reduced by 50%, but while I looked at the pictures I've noticed that they are using your BIOS, and on top of that they unceremoniously deleted everything that related it to you.

Of course, I gave up on the purchase even though I'm a huge fan of this type of machines (I have two NuXT computers) and personally, I think each one of us should do the same.
 
I have to admit I thought *briefly* of ordering one of these things for some combination of "just for laughs" and that it might provide some genuinely interesting parts to hack with (I'm curious what they're using for the keyboard controller, for instance, and also how the CGA is implemented), but, yeah, the way they've gone about just stealing the design and actively trying to cover up the source of the design and BIOS is just too shifty. (I'm kind of surprised they didn't try screwing with the XTIDE BIOS banner too.)

If someone does buy one please let us know if the CF card comes preloaded with all that pirated software already on it, including Planet X3. (I'm normally not too big on condemning people pirating 40 year old software, whatever, but the guy that wrote Planet X3 only did so a couple years ago and is still selling/supporting it. Not cool.)
 
ajacocks said:
And if anyone has bought it, send the company a request for the GPL code behind the BIOS. They’re obligated to provide it, even if they remove Sergey’s name.

- Alex
Click to expand...
Let's be real. Somebody that went through the effort to remove the traces of the author's name is not going to respond or care.

This reminds me of Robin Williams talking about unarmed British police offers: "Stop! Or I will say Stop!, again."
 
I remember recently iRobot trying to fight [release of code used under] GPL but of course they could only stall so long.

github.com

root access + GPL source code? · Issue #221 · iRobotEducation/create3_docs

The drop bear service is disabled unless development mode is set. These units ship as production mode. How can we gain ssh access? edit: Source code to rebuild the system with our own linux should ...
github.com github.com

I wish there was this kind of hope in this situation :/
 
Chuck(G) said:
They're in China--they'll simply ignore you.
Click to expand...
Your right Chuck .. the Chinese "steal with pride" ... they just dont seem to see it as being wrong. I suppose it can also be seen as a compliment that they liked your work so much Sergey that they copied it :confused:

I just hope that folks listen and don't buy them!
 
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For what it's worth, I tried to register for the forum (http://8086cpu.com/?page_id=371&view=forum&id=1) but of course the activation email never arrived. Might explain why there's only one post.

A little more digging and I came across this video from 2020, which appears to show an early version of it: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1HK411A7ZY/

I can't really tell because the image is the screen isn't very good but it in this version the BIOS appears to have been changed to "Sham BIOS"?

Also, the video says "Reproduction without the author's authorization is prohibited". So let's all respect that, okay?
 
640KB said:
For what it's worth, I tried to register for the forum (http://8086cpu.com/?page_id=371&view=forum&id=1) but of course the activation email never arrived. Might explain why there's only one post.

A little more digging and I came across this video from 2020, which appears to show an early version of it: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1HK411A7ZY/

I can't really tell because the image is the screen isn't very good but it in this version the BIOS appears to have been changed to "Sham BIOS"?

Also, the video says "Reproduction without the author's authorization is prohibited". So let's all respect that, okay?
Click to expand...
Interesting find... Pirating BIOSes since 2018 ;)
In the version shown in the video, just my name is removed. On the screenshot from AliExpress also there are some changes to the output.
The hardware design itself is quite interesting though. Looks like they went for FE2010A and TVGA9000i first, but perhaps due to chip shortages, they've decided to re-design it with discrete logic, 82xx controllers, and some kind of CGA controller
Zhao_8088_BIOS.png
 
mbbrutman said:
Let's be real. Somebody that went through the effort to remove the traces of the author's name is not going to respond or care.

This reminds me of Robin Williams talking about unarmed British police offers: "Stop! Or I will say Stop!, again."
Click to expand...
While I haven't seen the modifications to the code, I don't think there were many. Perhaps just removing the code (or the diagnostic output) for the hardware that is not present on the board, such as serial and parallel ports.
I imagine it was something like this: Hardware designer hired another guy to write a BIOS, and that guy, instead of creating his own code, took my code, slightly changed it, and slapped his name on it.
Of course my hopes of getting the things corrected are pretty low. But perhaps given the market pressure they would do something about it ;)
It also was an interesting suggestion to make a better BIOS (well, based on the screenshot above, they might be using 5 years old code, and a few bugs were fixed since already), and distribute that improved BIOS for this hardware
 
sergey said:
While I haven't seen the modifications to the code, I don't think there were many. Perhaps just removing the code (or the diagnostic output) for the hardware that is not present on the board, such as serial and parallel ports.
I imagine it was something like this: Hardware designer hired another guy to write a BIOS, and that guy, instead of creating his own code, took my code, slightly changed it, and slapped his name on it.
Of course my hopes of getting the things corrected are pretty low. But perhaps given the market pressure they would do something about it ;)
It also was an interesting suggestion to make a better BIOS (well, based on the screenshot above, they might be using 5 years old code, and a few bugs were fixed since already), and distribute that improved BIOS for this hardware
Click to expand...

Yes, we can only guess what might have been, had they reached out to the community and said they wanted to work together. Would have built up so much good will and credibility.
 
sergey said:
and some kind of CGA controller
Click to expand...

A wacky thought that occurred to me is it's *possible* they could be using something like an OAK-037 hardwired into CGA emulation mode. (You could run it that way and get register-compatible CGA but double-scanned on a VGA monitor.) Of course if they did that it'd be pretty pointless to lock out the VGA functionality, but weird things happen sometimes. Looking forward to a dissection assuming one of these actually makes it into the wild.
 
The way I see it, this is just par for the course.
The resurgence of arcade machines in the early 2010's and the Raspi allowed you to make replicas or mini multigame arcade cabinets, mainly using ROM files distributed without knowledge or authorization from the likes of Capcom, SNK, or Incredible Technologies. Initially they fought it but eventually there was no way to chase after every numbered company making retropi boxes, iCade/ELF multigame modules, or just MiSTer. Casual piracy.
By the mid 10's with damn near any handheld gaming system it wasn't a question of "what games will be available?" as it was "what emulators work on it?". Nintendo is still fighting that with the Switch. It wasn't the copyright hill the Ouya died on (remember how much crap it got after it became clear really the only purpose for it to exist was to play a pile of shovelware games, plus emulators for other game consoles?) and was it still hush-hush to be shipping console and handheld console emulators with grey-area BIOS dumps? I can go to the gas station right now and grab a handheld that looks like a knockoff GameBoy and it not only plays the entire GameBoy/Color/Advance catalog, but it comes with a large chunk of it on an SD card. Nintendo, Sega, Konami...really it was wasting time and money taking out distributors in Asia because they would shut down and a week later another would pop up shipping the same product.
Now that DOS gaming is all the rage and there's demand for systems AND portable systems, like I said above nothing is safe. They'll find the lowest-common denominations of parts needed to build it, grab whatever support code they can to fill the gaps without having to wade too far into copyright issues (though I do wonder if IBM would of gone after them if they stole the original 5150 BIOS, or even the PhoenixBIOS) and ship it while the demand is hot. They won't respect the copyrights because stereotypically, it's China. Rude as it is, it's China. It's not even challenging if Microsoft has issued licenses for Windows 95 on the pictured machines. You just know it's not but even Microsoft knows there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it.
 
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