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Sigma Designs Accused of Copyright Infringement
Cygnus v1 writes "The XVID team has ceased development of the XVID video codec for the time being because they say that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software includes their code and has claimed it as Sigma Designs' own work. The current XVID homepage includes some binary-level comparisons." Update: 08/23 03:14 GMT by T : Apparently the folks at Sigma have seen that no good is likely to come from this; an anonymous reader submits a link to this release on Yahoo! which says "complete source code will be available for download starting August 23, free of charge, through Sigma's website."
This sucks.. I've had people claim my code as their own and it just deflates your morale. Looks like it deflated XVID to the point where they pulled a Cartman*.
*"Screw you guys, I'm going home."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Tell that to Avery Lee who got his code stolen. The FSF was very helpful in forcing the individuals who stole it to comply with GNU terms.
Being that Xvid is a larger project than Virtual Dub, I would be highly surprised to not see the FSF step in at some point.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Has the FSF stated that it will defend any GPL'd code in court? IIRC, they said they would defend any software for which they hold the copyright, although they would probably provide legal assistance to others (and it is certainly in their interest to do so). Can anyone correct or confirm this?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
In the early days of the original PlayStation, Sony and SN Systems took GCC and modified it to become a compiler for PlayStation. However, SN Systems made a number of additional modifications, such as by adding dongle-based copy protection to protect "their" work. This crap finally stopped a few years later when game developers complained and Richard Stallman got involved. This incident is rarely heard about because PSX game development was under NDA. However, an NDA that covers GCC is illegal, because it would restrict the rights of the next user to copy GCC (thus automatically revoking Sony's right to copy GCC). The PlayStation 2 compiler is now distributed with clear notice that the GCC and binutils portions are under GPL and not covered by the NDA. They also come with source code. They are in fact the same source tree for professional developers as the GCC used in PS2 Linux. myria
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Did the authors register their copyright? They need to do that to get statutory damages. If they did, the statutory damages could be extremely high, and so you would have a case for Sigma to fear.
If not, they should register it right away, while Sigma is still distributing the alleged infringement.
If not registered, you can only get actual damages. And it's easy to see a court saying that actual damages -- which are financial, not personal -- are zero in a case like this. How much money did the team lose? You might do better arguing how much Sigma made from the infringing code but they would of course make the argument that the money came from their proprietary additions, not the GPLd code which of course anybody can get for free.
To compel them to comply with GPL, you will have to get the court to agree with the implied licence. That's harder, though if they really have documents from Sigma admitting that they were aware of the GPL terms you might have a shot.
Otherwise, I don't think anybody has had a court rule that you would be bound by the GPL contract if you used GPLd code. They would rule you violated copyright, but will they rule more?
Think about it. If I put a licence in my code saying "Use this code without my permission and you must give me your whole corporation" no court would consider that enforceable.
Will they consider it enforceable if the licence says "use this code without my permission and you must give away all the source code to everything you bundled with it"? Also in doubt.
Could be. Could not be.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
why have they ceased development? that's the part of the article I don't get. I guess they're pissed, but why stop working on the thing, is there a specific reason I missed?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Check this thread out , though:& threadid= 32015
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=
Specifically:
I spoke to a manager at Sigma Designs over the phone a couple weeks ago, and he basically verified the accusation - a programmer "mistakenly" based their MPEG-4 codec around XviD, added a few patches, changed the interface (but not by much), then released it as their own. We were informed that they were replacing all GPL'ed code with their own, to avoid a licensing problem (even though copyright infringement had already occurred, of course).
After that, version 1.1 came out, which was a complete slap in the face. Supposedly "rewritten", it was nothing but a different checkout of XviD with a few registers changed and some code reordered.
Should be an interesting few days.
-h
Software distributed with the GPL is not without cost The 'price' of using GPL code is that if you make changes to the code, you can't distribute the modified object code without also distributing the modified source code.
(I.E. the price is your derivative code).
In any case, these people are stealing copyright code without permission. Since they're charging for it, then they are liable for both the price they're charging for this stolen code and any punitive damages (which can be quite hefty for copyright violation).
It looks like this might be a good time to call in the lawyers.
____________
And yes there IS damage to me from having someone steal my GPL code. When I put code under the GPL, my expectation is that, in return for making my source code freely available, I'll get back from the community that uses my code the work that they do to improve my code. When someone steals my code and puts it into a proprietary product, I loose in a few ways:
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.