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Kiss Technology Counters MPlayer GPL Arguments
Snaller writes "Recently, MPlayer claimed that KISS Technology were violating the GPL by using parts of their MPlayer movie playback code in proprietary software. Now The Danish National Radio has interviewed the managing director of Kiss Technology, Peter Wilmar Christensen. He denies all claims of wrongdoing and suggests that if the pieces of code are the same, perhaps they were leaked from Kiss Technology and were then used by the Mplayer group. He also adds that the GPL is a weak license which has never been tested in court. Gabucino from the Mplayer team is furious, and accuses the director of outright lying."
Is it just me, or is this an attempt at blatantly copping-out by capitalizing on all the anti-GPL hysteria that has been rampant recently?
The GPL certainly hasn't been tested in court (yet), but that doesn't mean it hasn't been tested. A large number of out-of-court settlements (some of them rather expensive) prove that corporations are willing to respect the license, and that its defenders are willing to enforce compliance.
So here:
The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.
It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:
* streaming
* downloadable file
A written article is also available, in Danish.
We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.
Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.
Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.
Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.
Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.
Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.
Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.
Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.
Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the licenses of Open Source software should be interpreted and applied. Apart from being accused of taking code from MPlayer, Kiss Technology has also been accused of using other Open Source software, but managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen denies all accusations with small requisitions. The DVD player from K
...then you're back to standard copyright law, which means you *cannot* distribute any derived works. IMO, this is why the GPL is much stronger than a EULA. It doesn't try to restrict usage at all; and it grants you certain distribution rights if you're willing to play ball.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Site seems to be on the virge of slashdotting, so here's the mplayer peoples' comments.
:: Radio interview: Kiss VS MPlayer
2004.01.10, Saturday
posted by Gabucino
The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.
It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:
* streaming
* downloadable file
A written article is also available, in Danish.
We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.
Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.
Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.
Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.
Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.
Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.
Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.
Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.
Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the lice
There have been violations of the GPL, but they've been dealt with quietly and have not gone to court. See Eben Moglen's Article about GPL enforcement.
I think Eben Moglen Professor of Law & Legal History @ Columbia Law school who works pro bono for the FSF says it best for his licence (GPL):
.... how interesting. There, if I may put it to you briefly, is the trick. That's how it was done. That's how an enormous commons came into existence throughout the world, not just with zero cost of goods and movement and sales, but with near zero cost of enforcement.
e -speech.html
-----quote
I hear quite often that my license has not been tested in court. This puzzles me. It is, because of the structure of my license, the defendant's obligation affirmatively to plead it, if she wants to. After all, if she is distributing, it is either without license, in which case my license doesn't get tested--there's an unlicensed distribution going on and it's enjoinable--or the license is pled by the other side
For ten years, I did all of the GPL enforcement work around the world by myself, while teaching full time at a law school. It wasn't hard, really; the defendant in court would have had no license, or had to choose affirmatively to plead my license: they didn't choose that route. Indeed, they didn't choose to go to court; they cooperated, that was the better way. My client didn't want damages, my client wanted compliance. My client didn't want publicity, my client wanted compliance. We settled for compliance all the time. We got compliance all the time.
------end quote
The URL is http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/main
Done in the spirit of Free software, anonymously and with no karma whoring intentions. The licence was written by Eben Moglen but someone else brought forward the idea. GNU project founder Richard M. Stallman.
In the current KISS situation, the strings that are matched between the DVD firmware and mplayer are (1) in the same order and (2) include a subtitle format that mplayer was using in 2001 while the KISS firmware seems to be from 2003.
While the former could be a coincidence, how does KISS explain the later? They suggest that code leaked from KISS into mplayer!
You are right. mplayer has no right to break into the house of KISS and examine their ``tv''. But mplayer does have the legal right to bring their case before a judge, show the evidence that suggests that KISS has their ``tv'' and the judge can order KISS to show the ``tv''.
I hope that mplayer can gather the legal resources to persue this case -- why not have a European GPL precident?
Andy Rabagliati