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AOL Pulls Nullsoft's WASTE
dmehus writes "America Online, parent company of Nullsoft, has pulled what it views as a controversial project called WASTE from Nullsoft's servers. This is not the only time it has stepped in to Nullsoft's doings. It had quickly taken down Gnutella, developed by Nullsoft co-founder Justin Frankel, and shut down an MP3 search engine. CNET's News.com has more details." For those not keeping track, WASTE was only recently released.
AOL sees WASTE (and a few other Nullsoft products) as something that:
A- Doesn't provide them with a revenue stream.
B- Could bring on lawsuits
C- Competes with their other products.
AOL is a huge company, with lots of money. They could get sued for *real* money, not just Napster money. Also, the fact that they own a lot of media might cause them problems.
We are on the cusp of a new era of 'authorized' file downloads (iTunes). Finally big business is learning how to make money from music on the web, and letting another free service rear it's free little head isn't part of their plans.
It seems like Nullsoft is forgetting who butters its bread.
No reason to lie.
Ehm, no. Eminence said: "It's already irrelevant whether AOL would pull the plug on them. The source is out. GPL-ed."
And that remains absolutely correct. Of course AOL can pull the plug, but the damage has been done, in a manner of speaking. That said, AOL pulling the plug might mean there is no or hardly any support (user or developer) for WASTE now, so people will have to figure it out themselves. That might hinder the development a bit. Still, if there is demand for an app like WASTE - and I'm not sure there is - people will figure out just fine.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Hmm... maybe the only way for him to get out of his "contract" might be to get fired by aol?
There may be a non-compete or other clause making it that if he quits, then he may have to give back some of the money/NOT be able to do what he likes.. (ie: he has more freedom now as an employee than he would if he quit; but not as much as if he was fired)....
just a random non-thought...
--
Time is on my side
- - "exactly how can AOL plan to pull that?"
- They can't. Dave Winer has posted the source.
They Can. Read what they posted in its place. They say it wasn't released legally. If it wasn't released by anyone with the right to the code, it isn't under the GPL, just as an employee at MicroSoft couldn't release Windows under the GPL.
On another note, although I usually don't think companies are this Machiavellian, does anyone else see this possibility:
AOL faked an illegal release so that tons of people would have copied of illegal source code. Then, if a similar competing Open-Source project is created they can easily claim it used their code and wasn't actually developed independently. After all, they could definitely say that the authors of the other project could have easily stolen their source code. I'd only suspect something like this because WASTE actually isn't that complex of a program. It's not nothing, but its definitely something the community could put out in a month if some people tried.
However, I suspect it is more likely this was just a mistake, or Nullsoft not checking with the high-ups.
It doesn't matter if the source was posted on God's web site. If the individual who posted it (somebody other than God, presumably) didn't have the exclusive copyright to the code, they couldn't legally release it.
That's what AOL is saying. And they're almost certainly right, from what I can tell.
"GPL" is not a synonym for "I can do whatever I want."
They'd have difficulty pulling that one off; as their employer, AOL is subject to vicarious liability - within certain limits, it doesn't matter whether it was authorized or not, AOL are still stuck with it. So, if (for example) a Microsoft guy gives me a free copy of Visual Studio, they can't come after me for license fees later. IIRC, the limit is whether or not it was "reasonable" (to the court) for that employee to be doing so: a PR guy handing out free samples is OK, claiming to give me authorization to post it on Usenet is not ;-)
In this case, I'm pretty sure any court would uphold the Nullsoft action: assuming it wasn't a case of their website being cracked, the software was developed and released in the usual way, as they've released other programs in the past. AOL would have great difficulty getting past that. (Of course, they're free to delete the files from their own website - they just can't retract the GPLed copies already out there...)