MusicCity's Morpheus violating GPL

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.

Comments

GMT ?

[MagicFab]

I thought GMT was dead, man...
UCT's not gonna be happy 'bout this...

Re:I'm paying for this kind of shoddy reporting?

[RedWizzard]

Actually, I'm NOT paying for this.

Exactly. No one is asking you to pay for Slashdot. You are being given the option of paying to avoid seeing advertising. Big difference. You want Slashdot to be something it isn't, e.g. a service where the editors check the facts of the stories. That's fine but it's got nothing to do with the subscription model.

Offtopic but mod parent up

[Spiff28]

Because this is honestly the first accurate description of the way things are and should be with slashdot.

This place is merely a community. If you want it to survive, you donate. The editors are providing some kind of minor reward for this. But really, the reward means shit, you're donating to this site if you truly want it to go on. If you don't, then shut up.

The only other place that I in my limited college student surfing experience have witnessed do this honor system is Penny Arcade. You donate, you get a bonus wallpaper. The only way the site got payment was through their users. They tried this at the beginning of July. Note that link isn't dead.

Oh, shut up already.

[Tim]

"In all seriousness, if /. wants people to pay for it, there needs to be some serious checking of stories before posting. The Internet may have partially obsoleted deadtree papers, but it hasn't obsoleted the concept of journalistic integrity - and integrity is what separates a legitmate newspaper from a tabloid."

I'm going to get nailed for this, but I think it has to be said. I'm not trolling.

No one ever told you that you were paying for slashdot to have "journalistic integrity." Or that you have to pay. Or that you should pay for slashdot at all. In fact, you've been given every ability not to pay, and still obtain the same content. It's just that now you'll have to look at a few annoying ads if you choose not to pay. So will you pay? That depends on how much you can tolerate ads, doesn't it?

You know, whether you like it or not, slashdot has been doing the same damn thing for as long as I've been here. Maybe you'll argue that I missed the "grand old days," but I think I've been reading for long enough that I'd have noticed if slashdot's content changed appreciably at some point. I haven't noticed. So I guess I'm confused--why is this lack of "journalistic integrity" such a surprise to you? More specifically, why is it such a surprise that you have to spend time writing snarky little comments about the site, ON the site that you so despise? Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

In my recollection, no one here has ever suggested that slashdot should be your only source for "news." In fact, other than the occasional noteworthy editorial, book review, or famous comment, I don't recall slashdot ever generating any "news" of it's own. It's nearly always about linking to something interesting that somebody else wrote, and making some editorial comment about the link. You'd have to be living in a dreamworld to think that this was ever objective "news." For me, it's always been about two things: 1) rapid exposure to things and ideas that interest me and 2) reading the collected opinions of a bunch of like-minded people on subjects that I enjoy thinking about. Except that recently, that second aspect has been increasingly buried by pissy little comments like your own. And that really chaps my ass.

So you don't like slashdot. You think it's subjective and lacking integrity. Fine. That's your right. Go read something with integrity and leave the rest of us alone. We'll get along fine without you.