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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.

9 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong! by nikkelitous · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, the source for Morpheous is available. If you just look down at the bottom of the menu on the left you see a link called "Source Code." If you click on that link it lets you download the source.

  2. Source Is Provided (for something) by TheAJofOZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I downloaded the Morpheus client just after the previous story about it changing to the gnutella network and there was a link on the front page to the source code for the new client. I currently have a file "mpesrc1.zip" sitting on my desktop which contains source code. Admittedly the zip file then contains a folder called gnucleus1 so it may be the original, unmodified code rather than the morpheus code. Anyone else see this link or have the ability to analyse the code?

    1. Re:Source Is Provided (for something) by MajroMax · · Score: 5, Informative
      Admittedly the zip file then contains a folder called gnucleus1 so it may be the original, unmodified code rather than the morpheus code. Anyone else see this link or have the ability to analyse the code?

      A cursory check of the source reveals files modified as little as 24 hours ago -- one contains the comment at the beginning "Modified for StreamCast Networks by Rob Adamson 3/2/2002".

      Grepping the source tree for "orpheus" reveals several mentions, including in what appear to be product name strings.

      Looks like the real deal, folks, and someone just jumped the lawsuit-happy gun.

      --
      "Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
  3. Minor, advertizing violation by MajroMax · · Score: 5, Informative
    MusicCity actually _does_ have a source code download link, on the main page even -- check the left toolbar, at the bottom.

    A quick download and scan of the readme.txt file shows that it is indeed Gnucleus source. The GPL violation here is merely in the advertizement -- the source is quite throughly public; I'm sure the flaw will be corrected soon.

    --
    "Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
  4. Re:they make you keep updating too by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 5, Informative

    Kazaa came out with an update for their client a few weeks back. The way that the updates for Kazaa and Morpheus work is that they slowly spread because whenever you connect to a node that has the updated version you are forced to update. Then if anyone happens to connect to you they have to update.

    So Kazaa made an updated version and let their updated version spread to all Kazaa users. Then either by a preset date or some sort of signal they activated the one "feature" of this update: to give all Morpheus users the bad version error. Really underhanded.

    Right now sometimes on Morpheus you might still connect, depending on if you are lucky and connect to another Morpheus node, but you are only in contact with a small part of the network.

    --
    Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  5. Not only that ... by fferreres · · Score: 5, Informative

    But the Gnucleus team is really happy with Morpheus. The "news rant" i think was due to the MusicCity attitude. They didn't even the contact Gnucleus team.

    But they indeed are very proud, and happy. Take a look:

    http://www.gnucleus.com/general/clones.html

    Here's the text:

    "Morpheus: Also a post-Gnucleus 1.0 clone. Wow, this was unexpected, 50 million users and they switch over to the Gnucleus engine... uhm.. welcome aboard!"

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  6. Nice update T... by zsmooth · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not only did CmdrTaco not check this out before posting, but Timothy's update is VERY misleading. He says "It looks like the source is available now, gpl.txt and all." (emphasis mine) Well, looks to me like it was available BEFORE too if you bothered to look. It's not like all the sudden they said "Holy CRAP, look at this story on /., we better get our source code up..."

    Sheeesh...

  7. Re:I just tried to compile it.... by weezel · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Gnucleus source distribution also has this problem (in addition to tons of warnings, at least under VC7). I think you'll find all the files that should be under res\ are actually in zlib\. You can hand pick them out and move them to res\ or if you just want to compile quickly just duplicate zlib\ over to res\.

    --
    EOF
  8. Re:I just tried to compile it.... by penguin_nipple · · Score: 4, Informative
    I have successfuly built the Morpheus Preview Edition from their source

    My build is neither efficient or great, but it did end up working (had to fix their code, couple of missing declarations missing in class headers). I also had to create the icons and bitmaps (i did a horrible job, but they worked).

    Here's the screenshot.

    I stand corrected. :)