Peercast Source Available

jilles writes "Peercast, a p2p streaming program, has had some attention on slashdot recently. Now the source code has been released under GPL. Please find the announcement + source code here."

Comments

Download conditions?

[Anonymous Coward]

The peercast web page says "To download the PeerCast source you must also agree to the following conditions..."

The GPL says "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."

Sounds like there is some incompatibility here.

Re:Download conditions?

[theoddbot]

From their webpage:

To download the PeerCast source you must also agree to the following conditions:

a) You must not connect to the main PeerCast network if you have modified any of the code in the `core` module. (see below)

b) You must not submit modifications to us that contain or use code that is not under the terms of the GPL.

c) You must agree that any modifications accepted into the main PeerCast CVS will automatically fall under the terms of the GPL and PeerCast commercial license.

d) You must agree to the terms of the GPL license that covers PeerCast.

e) We reserve the right to accept or deny modifications to the main PeerCast CVS.

f) Modifications accepted into the main PeerCast CVS can not be revoked. (see below)

The reason being that broken clients will affect everyone on the network. In order to help you test changes we have set up a seperate network solely for this purpose.

If you find a bug after submitting, simply resubmit the changes.

(a) Could be the Terms Of Service for their network. Shouldn't be a problem with the GPL there. And they have set up a separate test network for you.

(b) and (d) are just restating the GPL

(e) Is fair enough. They can accept whatever they want into their tree. If you don't like it, fork.

(c) and (f) should also be fine. They have released their code under the GPL. There is nothing in the GPL to obligate them to incorporate any changes you make back into their tree.

If you want your code in their tree, agree to their terms. If you don't like it, fork.

-Spyro

Re:Download conditions?

[FunkyChild]

d) You must agree to the terms of the GPL license that covers PeerCast.

(b) and (d) are just restating the GPL

As far as I know, the GPL doesn't stipulate that you must agree to the GPL in order to use the software. Since the GPL affords extra rights you can either:

a) use the software like any other closed source software, with all the protections of copyright law (eg no unauthorised distribution etc.)

or b) agree to the GPL, and in doing so receive the extra rights that the author gives you such as the right to modify, reate derivative works etc, under the conditions specified in the agreement.

You have a choice - either agree to the GPL in it's entirety or just use the software under the usual terms of copyright law. The GPL is not a EULA that defines the terms of you using the software, it is an agreement one chan choose to enter into, in order to gain additional rights.

Re:Download conditions?

[ComputerSlicer23]

(c) and (f) are not as wholesome clean as they appear. They require implicit trust of the entity your dealing with not to at some point abuse your trust. They have a great deal of power, and a change in management, or a court order could cause them to abuse those powers.

You need a lawyer to properly interpret what they mean in c. Do they mean a specific version of the Peer Cast Commerical license, or do they mean what it says after you've agreed, and they've since re-written it?

The really stupid part, is they don't force you to give up your copyright. So if they you submit changes back to them, and they want to change the license, they aren't the copyright holder, you are, so they have to ask you for your permission. At least, if you hire a lawyer and stop them they do.

Okay, what in the hell do they mean by revoke in part (f)?. No one but a CVS committer can "revoke" anything. Are they saying, if legal issues come up you can't force them to remove the code. Uhh, they can't usurp the legal authority that says they can't have it in the first place. Are they saying, that if you change your mind on the source, it can't be removed. Uhhh, I've already agreed to your current license, what more do they want? They can always keep the current code I've submitted under the commerical license in effect when I submitted the changes. This has potential for abuse.

Do they mean, if they add code I don't like, I can't remove/revoke it in my local copy. Uhhh, that really not very GPL like, and clearly not compliant with GPL source.

Depending on how all this reads, and what precisely the legal implications of it are, this is not a very nice license. If they want to say, look, we'll accept your changes into the mainline tree, but you have to give up your copyright, and it's releasable under the GPL and our commercial license. That's a lot like the FSF, except the commercial license bit.

If they want to have terms on connecting to their network, that's fine. Make it a term of agreement for connecting to the network, but that isn't compatible with GPL as a term of downloading the source. The really ironic part, is what if you give it to me under the GPL, I never agreed to any of these terms, so they don't apply to me at all. I have them under the license of the GPL. None of these terms transfer w/ the GPL (specifically, because you can't add additional terms to the GPL). It might be a GPL like license, but it sure isn't the GPL.

I see what it is they are attempting to accomplish, but it's pretty clear they don't have a good legal staff. IANAL, and even I can see all kinds of blantant legal problems with this. I'd expect them to fold inside of a year as a business if this is all the more they pay attention to detail.

Kirby

Re:Download conditions?

[PeerCast]

As someone else mentioned, the GPL doesn`t give anyone rights to modify our tree, if you don`t like the idea of your code being in the main branch, then fork.

f) is common sense, if you submit a patch that gets accepted then you can`t really expect us to be able to roll back N versions if you suddenly decide you don`t want it in there anymore.

BTW peercast.org isn`t a business, we don`t have any legal staff, we`ve got a few programmers working in their spare time.

GPL + Commercial

[XTerm89D]

Lately I see more and more companies release their program/product under the General Public License, saying that, if you want to use it in a commercial product you have to buy a commercial license.
I am modestly fond over this practice, but hey, more GPL software is good for everyone !
However some issues arise, say I write a patch for their program, and they incorporate it. If some then buys a 'commercial license' they are selling MY patch under a non Free license...
Furthermore, the FSF has announces an updated GPL in a few months... something tells me that the FSF might be tempted to make this sort of things impossible, since, if you look at it straighly this is a bit fishy.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:GPL + Commercial

[scottmartinnet]

The whole patch issue has been addressed. It comes down to the fact that by submitting a patch to a program under a certain licensing structure, you are implictly consenting to have your code licensed under the same structure. Why else would you have submitted the patch? And anyway, any patch that the original author would want to distribute as part of the application is almost certainly a derivitive work under copyright law, and not yours anyway, much like the way a second verse to a copyrighted song isn't yours.

It's not fishy at all. In fact, it's very much what the GPL has in mind. The GPL is about letting people have the freedom to modify the code they run and to distribute those changes, rather than being forced to treat all software as a big black box that they have to beg vendors to fix when it breaks. (Well, that and disclaiming liability.) Giving people the additional freedom to keep those changes secret and still distribute the product is perfectly fine, as long as you wrote all the code (or it was given to you). As the owner of the a program, you have all rights to it, and can give any subset of those rights you want in exchange for anything. There's nothing the GPL can do about that, short of adding a "belongs to RMS" clause.

The GPL is not about keeping money away from code.

Updates to the GPL are going to be about closing the loophole of web applications and the like, not about this.

Re:GPL + Commercial

[amccall]

(Standard IANAL). Usually this is handled by the company/group simply by requiring that any patches folded into the main tree have the copyright assigned to the Company/group developing it. The only problem would be if the company/group stole source code from a fork of the project, or they used a patch the developer did not agree to having this done with.

Whenever you get QT, IIRC, all of the source code in Troll Tech's distribution is owned by Troll Tech, even if there are revised versions floating around for KDE, or distribution packages.

There is no legal grey area here - developers can license there code under several licenses, and no reasonable change I can see to the GPL will stop that. Further, I can't see the FsF having any disare to put an end to the practice, as it is, in reality, supporting the end goal of Free Software.

RIAA leaked it?

[Exiler]

Phase 1: Get source.
Phase 2: GPL it and have the servers Slashdotted.
Phase 3: ?????
Phase 4: Profit!

Yea yea, this is COMEDY people. I'm not quite that paranoid... .>

The PeerCast FAQ

[Max Romantschuk]

The PeerCast FAQ is a good introduction to PeerCast.

Re:Fastrack

[Zorikin]

OpenFT?

There's already an implementation of the FastTrack protocol, the problem is that the kazaa-and-friends network doesn't allow clients which aren't blessed by the authentication server to connect.

Gnutella clients have been and still are accumulating the useful features of FastTrack.

...agree to the following condition...

[Cheese Cracker]

You must not connect to the main PeerCast network if you have modified any of the code in the `core` module.

Yeah sure... how many crackers will adhere to this condition?

Re:...agree to the following condition...

[PeerCast]

Yeah sure... how many crackers will adhere to this condition?

None. Its there to let well meaning hackers know what they should/should not do after they`ve downloaded the source.

Re:Fastrack

[Per Wigren]

If everyone on fastrack switched over to gnutella all would be fine.

No, that would be HORRIBLE! Gnutella doesn't scale that much.

An interesting inference

[tanveer1979]

Consider this, RIAA says 1$ per user, okay the radio station beams to one user, and that user passes it along. RIAAs jurisdiction will end at that point, ie the point of radio station. Beyond the radio station what the user is doing with stream is not under their control, unless some CARPA/DARPA bullshit comes to tackle it. So you can have live365 type stations take a breather. They can have only 5 streams, thats damn cheap by current rates, and the listenrs keep passing it along.

I am not too sure what legal redressal RIAA has against this thing, I doubt if there is any right now. Could anyone enlighten me?

Frankly speaking this could be a big coupe. Even if they change laws etc( I doubt that will be any time soon) they cant go running after everybody in the chain. If this network gets to be big, the hounds have a big task ahead of them. The only possible redressal for them is if they get the govt to ban the internet itself!

Guess what, technology always stays ahead...