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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.
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.
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?
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
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.
Actually, I'm NOT paying for this. :P
/. 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.
In all seriousness, if
Did anyone download the binaries and ask for a copy of the source before they started screaming?
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.
This story is completely wrong. The source is available
and has been. The "update" leads you to believe they some how
gave in when they always complied. Do the editors check
anything ? Of course not this is slashdot.
As a side note check the load of crap news post on the gnucleaus
site. They somehow believe morpheus needed some 'permission'
to do anything with the source and act like they are
more honest and holy than morpheus, when they are just taking
advantage of the GPL as its meant to be.
I've been thinking about whether I would be willing to pay for a subscription or put up with advertising, but I have to agree with you -- this "article" just made the decision easy. If the "reporters" like CmdrTaco can't be bother to check something so trivial before splattering such a sensationalistic item like a supermarket tabloid, then I see absolutely no sense in paying for the "service."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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))"
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.)
Let me just say it again. giFT. giFT, giFT, giFT. If you're into file-trading and you've got Linux (or some other Unixlike that will compile it), run it. If you're into file-trading and programming and you use some other OS, maybe you should consider writing a port.
Or you could use Limewire or some other Gnutella, I suppose, but I have been trying for days and I have yet to get anything to download from Gnutella. It just keeps rechecking and rechecking and nothing ever sends. giFT might have a smaller network, but at least it actually works most of the time.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Wouldn't displaying the GPL license constitute a written offer to provide source? IANAL, but I would certainly consider it to be such an offer were I to encounter it... It would inspire me to request the source before screaming about a license violation. Now if the license weren't included, it'd be another story altogether.
.sig: file not found
Wrong. Neither is theft. One is copyrignt infringement, and the other is copyright infringement and fraud.
Copyright infringement and theft are not interchangeable legal terms.
I fear this will give the GPL and free software a bad name. If Morpheus is ever shut down because of copyright violations, then maybe people will associate GPL and free software with distributing warez, mp3s, videos, etc... all these illegal things that Morpheus (and gnutella) let you do.
I really think people associated with free software DO NOT want their reputations attached to software which lets people conduct illegal activities (and don't argue with this - IT IS ILLEGAL). Yes, you could say this about FTPd or apache or other programs, but Morpheus and Gnutella have a single purpose - to let people exchange these files illegally. I just don't want other projects to take the rap for the few bad apples in the bunch... You know - then free software opponents (read as: Microsoft) will come along and paint Linux and other open source projects as "illegal" and "insecure" and "untrustworthy" (which they may or may not be). Anyone out there with the same sentiment?
taco
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
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...
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.
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
holy bejeezus thats a lot of people using Morpheus.
I've been using Morpheus for quite awhile, although I had always wished that it was an open source product. Now it is, thanks to improvements to gnutella.
If Fast Track/Kazaa really did kick Morpheus off their network then they just committed suicide because given the choice between closed source spyware and open source, assumming both products work equally well, people will go for the open source version.
53,000,000 downloads! I think that makes Morpheus the single most popular GPL'd software ever. Good job, guys.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
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. :)