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.

Comments

First post?????

[Anonymous Coward]

So where is the mirror of the software?

way to go AOL!

[matt4077]

...we all love you.

But, since it's GPL and some people downloaded it, it doesnt really matter any more anyway.

Does anyone have a copy of it?

[pilot1]

It is released under the GPL, so I suppose putting it on a website would be legal.
Has anyone done this?
I orignally wasn't that interested in it, but since they've pulled it from their website I want to try it.

Expected...

[Davak]

I do not know why this is a surprise to anyone...

I think everybody--both programmers and users-- figured this would happen. Gnutella first... now WASTE. This is the safest way to do such projects that have COULD have questionable legal and moral aspects.

Now, Nullsoft looks like the jedi ninja creative gurus and AOL looks like the responsible authority figure.

In the grand scheme of things...

good ideas are like a virus. Once they are released, they will keep going and going...

Davak

Sorry to say

[NoInfo]

As they say on the site, you're now officially pirating if you're using WASTE. You have no license to it or its source code. Since a 'rogue' group of employees have no right to release Nullsoft's software under that or any license. For those expecting a 404, the page now says:

NOTICE OF UNAUTHORIZED SOFTWARE

An unauthorized copy of Nullsoft's copyrighted software was briefly posted on this website on or about Wednesday May 28, 2003. The software was identified as "WASTE" (the "Software") and includes the files "waste-setup.exe", "waste-source.zip", "waste-source.tar.gz" and any additional files contained in these files.

Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft.

If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the Software, you acquired no lawful rights to the Software and must destroy any and all copies of the Software, including by deleting it from your computer. Any license that you may believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated.

Any reproduction, distribution, display or other use of the Software by you is unauthorized and an infringement of Nullsoft's copyright in the Software as well as a potential violation of other laws.

Thank you.

Nullsoft

So, anyway, it's probably not different from the scores of things you pirate these days. Hell, the illegality will probably just increase the quanitity of downloads (and, perhaps, the cease and desist letters).