Comments on: Smart Crash Reporter

By: mdpdb

mdpdb — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:14:04 +0000

Show me the source in this project that makes any mention of this Unsanity stuff. Because if “stuff I can find with nm” counts, one could *never* release any GPL code in a Cocoa app, since Cocoa is closed-source. The GPL leaves what constitutes “linking” vague for a reason.

Your cheap insults don’t help your argument, either. Learn to behave.

By: d4rk

d4rk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:08:51 +0000

No I didn’t and yes it does. Anyway, my post was an FYI to the Plex _dev_ team not to their clueless $2 PR troll.

By: mdpdb

mdpdb — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:30:32 +0000

You’ll ignore the fact that the project files don’t link against closed source, too, apparently.

By: d4rk

d4rk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:09:45 +0000

“You’re assuming those symbols weren’t injected by the OS at runtime, which is actually pretty common in Obj-C land.”

I’m not assuming anything, and you wouldn’t have to either if you read the man page of ‘nm’, they’re not objc messages. I’ll ignore the rest of your out of context sympathy inspiring post.

By: mdpdb

mdpdb — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:32:20 +0000

“Sure it is linked to proprietary binaries”

“Both list a bunch of symbols to which I couldn’t find the source.”

You’re assuming those symbols weren’t injected by the OS at runtime, which is actually pretty common in Obj-C land. Like I said, the only change to the application is adding a few properties to a config file. The documentation of this is available here: http://www.unsanity.com/images/previews/smartcrashreports/smartcrashreports-for-developers.pdf

I’m not affiliated with this project, and I’m not even really a user of it (I’ve launched it and played with it a few times, never actually watched anything in it), so I say this without prejudice: It seems to me you guys need to call off the OSS witch hunt, or at least do enough research to deterministically back up your claims before jumping on this project’s case. This isn’t the first time I’ve happened on one of these threads where there have been overreaching accusations of breaking the XBMC license.

By: d4rk

d4rk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:23:01 +0000

Sure it is linked to proprietary binaries, and it’s obvious by looking at the project file and easily verified by doing an ‘nm Plex | grep Unsanity’ and ‘nm Plex | grep Crash’. Both list a bunch of symbols to which I couldn’t find the source. Are they available elsewhere?

# nm Plex | grep Crash
00051f23 T _InstallCrashReporter
00abb6a0 D _gSmartCrashReportsArchive
00ab65c0 D _gSmartCrashReportsInstallUI

# nm Plex | grep Unsanity
00818a4d T _UnsanitySCR_CanInstall
00818ab4 T _UnsanitySCR_Install
00818599 T _UnsanitySCR_InstallableVersion
00818759 T _UnsanitySCR_InstalledVersion
00817d09 T _UnsanitySCR_IsMatchSpecifierRegistered
00817ebb T _UnsanitySCR_RegisterMatchSpecifier
00817e22 T _UnsanitySCR_UnregisterMatchSpecifier
00817892 T __UnsanitySCR_ArrayCompare
008179ee t __UnsanitySCR_CopyRulesArray
008185a3 t __UnsanitySCR_CreateURLToSCRBundle
00817752 t __UnsanitySCR_FindInArray
008175fb t __UnsanitySCR_IsMatchSpecifierValid
008186ef t __UnsanitySCR_PathToSCRBundle
008180ef T __UnsanitySCR_RecursiveIsSecureInputManager
00819d72 T __UnsanitySCR_RestoreArchive
00817668 t __UnsanitySCR_StoreRulesArray
0081896a t __UnsanitySCR_WaitOnPipe

By: mdpdb

mdpdb — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:08:02 +0000

@d4rk: There’s no linking to proprietary binaries to use Smart Crash Reporter. The only change to the application is to include two properties in the application’s Info.plist.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:59:19 +0000

nm, it was my dns. but now i see it’s not open source

By: d4rk

d4rk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:46:34 +0000

Hi Elan, thanks for the credit.

If I’m not mistaken, Smart Crash Reporter is neither GPL nor open source? If that’s the case, you can’t link any GPL code to it (SmartCrashReportsAPI.o and SmartCrashReportsInstall.o). There are some good open source alternative like Breakpad:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Breakpad

and Socorro:

http://code.google.com/p/socorro/

However, if you still want to continue using Smart Crash Reporter, it could be linked against another process that in turn spawns Plex or something.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:45:20 +0000

This is a great tool! I can’t seem to locate the source in your git tree and smartcrashreports.com is down. Could you point me to the source?