Sigma Designs/XVid Update

Reagen Ward and many other people have written in with updates to the Sigma Designs/XVid situation, reported a few days ago. Sigma has replied in email and a press release that they intend to make the source code available, however, they seem to be paying lip service at best to the terms of the GNU Public License. Grant Gross from Newsforge has been pursuing the story and in a story yesterday and another today lays out the current situation.

Comments

What a crock

[sydlexic]

I'm so tired of hearing the 'evil loner' excuse from companies. Make someone responsible. Fire their asses or have someone resign. Show the world this crap won't be tolerated. Instead what we get is this lame excuse that we're not to blame because of some rogue employee. When employees fail, it's management's responsibility.

Re:Source code

[jonathan_ingram]

Yes, they have made the source code available. However, they nowhere state that it is a derivative work of XviD (although they state that it was 'inspired' by XviD) - they are claiming complete copyright over it.

Why should you care?

It's not a licencing issue - it's a copyright issue. If a have some GPL code, and I own the copyright, then I have the right to relicence the code any way I wish (including giving a company the right to use it in a closed source application - probably for a fee). If I have GPL code which I do *not* own the copyright for, then I have *no* rights to relicence.

This is a similar situation to that facing Mozilla a few months ago - they wanted to relicence the code, but couldn't unless they could contact *every single copyright owner* to get consent (and in Mozilla's case this meant every contributor of a significant patch).

Sigma Designs have taken someone elses code, and claimed copyright over it. This copyright claim (if it were correct) gives them the right to use the stolen code in closed source applications -- and it *is* being used in closed source and hardware applications.

So it doesn't matter that Sigma have opened the source to the stolen code. That's the smaller evil.

A quick translation

[realgone]

Oh, this is just too much fun. I absolutely have to parse this one:

"Thank you for contacting Sigma Designs and requesting information that relates to our MPEG-4 CODEC and the availability of its source code. We would like to take this opportunity to address the relevant issues that have been raised."

You might be wondering why I'm standing next to your car -- yeah, the one with the smashed window right here -- with a slim-jim in one hand and your stereo in the other. I swear it's not what it looks like.

"...Fulfilling this goal was carried out in two steps. The first was the introduction of an MPEG-4 CODEC, provided free of charge, so that worldwide users could begin encoding new content."

Here's the deal -- I thought it was my car. I've got one just like this.

"The second was the release of source code, so that the development community could continue with technical improvements."

Okay, so maybe I knew it was your car, but I was... um... just borrowing it. I'm all done, see? Here, you can have it back now. No harm, no foul.

"Sigma never intended in making, nor realized, any profits from this code base."

Tell you the truth, I wasn't even planning on keeping your crummy car. We were just gonna use it as the getaway vehicle in this bank job we're doing next week, see?

"Several weeks after the CODEC was first released, Sigma was contacted by the XVID development team regarding the use of certain portions of their code. Upon examination, it was determined that one of our programmers, unbeknownst to management and contrary to Sigma's policy, had utilized some routines posted by XVID as open source."

Wait, wait, ignore everything I just said. It was really some other guy that was trying to steal your car -- this shady looking punk in a leather jacket. You're lucky I got here when I did. I think he ran that way. If you hurry you can still catch him.

"During the past four weeks, Sigma had communicated with XVID to resolve the situation. As a result, Sigma has decided to make the current version of the MPEG-4 CODEC available under the GPL license."

OW! OW! Stop kicking me! Alright, here's your damn stereo back! Jeez!

"Sigma is a supporter of the Linux operating system, appreciates the work being done by the open source community, and continues to issue certain other code under open source arrangements."

But if you don't mind me saying so, sir, you've got great taste in stereo equipment. I got a good luck at that puppy as I was prying her out of the dash and yours is a beaut!

"Though we believe that we have acted as expediently as possible, Sigma Designs sincerely apologizes to the open source community for this inadvertent use of GPL code and for the several weeks it took to resolve the situation."

So we're cool, right? No one needs to call the cops or anything. I'll just grab my stuff and -- look over there! The Pope!

*sound of running footsteps in the other direction*

It's far from being over

[fluor2]

Doom9 is an independent "journalist" that seem to have a very good overview at things in the encoding scene. Here is a sniplet from what he writes:

"First an update on the XviD situation. The release of the Sigma source code does not mean it's all over, it's far from being over. The license agreement which you have to agree to before you can download, and install the codec is not compatible with the GPL. Furthermore, it can now clearly be seen (download the source code and have a look for yourself) that the Sigma codec is pretty much a copy of the XviD codec, but all the copyright notices of the original developers have been removed and replaced. This does not only violate the GPL but copyright laws - you can't just take a program, change a few lines and change the copyright statements, you only have copyright protection for the parts you wrote on your own. And related to this the Sigma codec also contains code taken from the OpenDivX project, the files were outfitted with 2 different copyright notices which is quite funny."

I hope that Sigma will respect GPL licences. I will for sure stop every purchase of Sigma stuff where I work.