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MusicCity's Morpheus violating GPL

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-thats-not-right dept.

dotslash writes "The new Morpheus Preview Edition client [download.com] is actually just a fork of Gnucleus an open source GPLd Gnutella client. Upon installation Morpheus PE displays the GPL and asks the user to accept. It is currently being distributed without source in violation of article 3 of the GPL. Gnucleus developers are not too happy about this. This Morpheus client is being downloaded by thousands of frustrated Morpheus users who have been cutoff the FastTrack/Kazaa network and are now migrating to Gnutella. The violation of the GPL is blatant and will also be the first glimpse of the GPL for many of these new users. It seems like the executives at MusicCity have decided that they prefer free 'as in beer' not 'as in speech.'" Update: 03/03 05:10 GMT by T : It looks like the source is available now, gpl.txt and all.

6 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. time for change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I now see the light.

    I didn't give a damn before about music companys getting cheated, but now that this freeloading is hurting an opensource company.......I'm changing my ways. I will now go out and legally purchase the latest by N'SYNC

  2. There is some irony here somewhere... by Confessed+Geek · · Score: 5, Funny


    Its ok to have software designed to "share" possibly copyrighted music, but God forbid they mess with the GPL copyright...

    Not condemning, just seems amusingly ironic.

  3. They don't care? by burtonator · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hm...

    They don't care about the Music industries Intellectual Property... why should they care for the Open Source communities IP? :)

    After all we have a lot less money to sue them.

    I think we should create a paypal account where we can take donations to buy our own Senator so that we can get or OWN version of the SSSCA created! :)

    Kevin

  4. Subscribe now! by dimator · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, friends, subscribe to /. now for this kind of journalistic integrity and quality.

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  5. It's all so obvious by Tal+Cohen · · Score: 3, Funny

    They made the source available, but well hidden, and then submitted a story to Slashdot saying "The source ain't there!". Result: free advertising on Slashdot.

    Will paying for subscription also remove this kind of ads, guys?

    --
    - Tal Cohen
  6. Re:Source Availability by notsoanonymouscoward · · Score: 5, Funny

    bah, even if they hadn't given the code out, I'm sure it would have appeared on morpheus in under a week.

    --
    I ate my sig.