Slashdot Mirror
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."
The reason GPL has never been tested in court is that there haven't been any solid violations of the licence and the fact that it is so clear (the GPL that is...). The only grey area is 'derivative work' which most certainly includes blatently ripping off a chunk of code.
The only way we could know for sure would be to see the CVS/[insert source archive system here] logs to see whether they were developed all at once by KISS (implying they stole) or whether it built up over time...
To be or not to be.-Shakespeare
To do is to be.-Nietzsche
To be is to do.-Sartre
Do be do be do.-Sinatra
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.
He just got a bunch of easily riled up geeks that love the GPL pissed off at him.
Expect mailbombing, DDOS attacks, and outright criticism. Then expect to start hearing from legal advisors that know what they are talking about.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Well, never let it be said that Americans are the only people to behave in shitty corporate self-interested ways.
Such dishonesty is painfully pathological.
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
... i'm really eager to see what is going to happen when the GPL goes to court.
To me, it's seems that with wider commercialization of GPLed technology, it becomes more important to have solid foundation to stop once and for all corporate greed and FUD.
...the way to show support for our mplayer friends is to slashdot them into infinity!
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
GPL has been tested over and over, and enforced too. Those who don't comply are slashdotted! (And some those who do too!) We slashdotted SCO, now we slashdot KISS.. Fear our wrath!
...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!!!
The arguement of "who stole whose code" shouldn't be too hard to settle. There are archives of old versions, logs of when certain sections/features were added. Compare the allegedly stolen Mplayer code with the Kiss release date, and then tell Kiss to kiss our GNU/Asses.
As for the GPL being were and unverified in court, perhaps they'd like to be our guinea pig? Of course, without GPL they'd still be in violation of copyright and up for large monentary damages.
Neither scenario paints a pretty picture of Kiss Technology. Are they a publically traded company?
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
im there. you're paying, right?
.
I met this guy at Cebit last year - and he certainly seemed VERY pleased with himself. He was going on about how the player used "2 million lines of code". I wonder how many of those 2 million came from the MPlayer CVS server? ]-[
Keep It Stolen, Stupid.
SCO is apparently suing KISS for stealing their business model...
The CB App. What's your 20?
Wow, either that's a bad translation, or Peter talked himself in circles like 8 times. I guess he wanted to make it clear that they don't use MPlayer directly... as if that really mattered. Instead of answering a question with an answer, he kept saying they were looking into it and investigating. Now that's okay for a one or two line answer, but he kept saying it over and over and over again. It really sounded like he had no idea what to say but decided to say it over and over again.
Over all, a fun read!
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
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
Is there any such thing as a GPL defense fund? A lot of open source software is being developed by people who probably don't have the extra money to pay the legal fees needed to pursue action against GPL violators. Hence the GPL remains untested in court (although IBM may help fix that soon).
It'd be nice if any leftovers from the US$10 million that IBM and Intel are putting up would be dumped over into a general GPL defense fund.
By saying "if parts of the code are similar maybe MPlayer stole our code" he is basically admitting that someone stole from someone.
then he says...
The GPL is a weak license and hasn't been tested in court. What is the point of making this comment if he feels that MPlayer stole from them? What he is really saying is "What are you going to do about it?"
It's really too bad that this article wasn't out a bit sooner. It seems from on their homepage that they did a public presentation in vegas from the 8th-11th. Anyone know their next presentation date... perhaps we could come and present some poignant questions about the now-dubious legitimacy of their product (nothing quite like: "isn't it true that XXX and YYY have found evidence that your code is stolen from project ZZZ" in a public place).
This is an interesting problem that will require a solution. Can the Mplayer people prove that their code existed before it existed in Kiss' source tree? Certainly the contents of version control systems could be compared, and release repositories such as SourceForge could be used as evidence, but a more formal system is probably needed.
I imagine a system similar to copyright registration and escrow services, where a neutral third party would receive code checkins/snapshots that would be time-stamped, "sealed" as evidence (and compared against SCO sources, natch). Then the owner would stand on more solid ground, and even unpaid open-source developers would have a chance to protect their work. Of course, such a service would have to be highly affordable, perhaps even free, SourceForge-style; in fact, this is something SourceForge ought to support and promote.
but I'm curious as to why the mplayer folks were using "strings" on the KISS module(s).
Granted, if what they say is true, it *does* look like something's not right there.
But why they were even looking to see how KISS's stuff worked is a bit curious.
do() || do_not();
Hopefully we can stop this evil before it spreads too far. No, not Velma looking really good in the next "Scooby Doo" movie, but companies stealing GPL code, then arguing "Well, *you* must have stolen it from us", even though they can't prove it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Mind you that I'm referring to U.S. law which may or may not impact the MPlayer/KISS problem, but didn't a high court recently decide that it is not copyright infringement to copy data from a database built from a compilation of data? That is, you can't just organize a bunch of readily available data and copyright it and prevent anyone else form using the same data.
The reason I ask is that the original Slashdot article stated that a big clue was "the KISS ROM includes the same list, in order, of subtitle formats as MPlayer (including their own format mpsub)". That sounds like it could be construed as a compiled set of data, akin to the case I cited above.
I'm certainly not supporting KISS
That's right... By some freak coincidence, KISS had developed a custom subtitle format and gave it the name "MPSub". You might think that the "MP" in that name stood for MPlayer -- you know, as if MPlayer had invented it -- but you would be wrong.
uhh...
Yes, Kiss stole from Mplayer. Calling them on it early and harshly, though, might have been the wrong tactic as it forces Kiss to defend an unethical position or to admit they are thieves.
Now, it's an issue of ego and anger where it could have been a largely uninvolved and low key licence dispute.
Case in point: Anyone remember Marion Barry, former Washington DC mayor? He was caught buying crack cocaine -- and ended up a hero to many people because he fought back from an ethically undefendable position where he had already lost everything. Barry is still involved in DC politics.
Kiss currently can cause Mplayer and other projects trouble, and since Kiss also -- potentially -- has nothing additional to loose there is little reason for them not to be defiant and to basically say "No, you're wrong" to Mplayer.
The only thing that will change this is if the dammage of caving in is less than the dammage of fighting this.
Any ideas?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Mudflinging with no proof from both sides? The MPlayer guys have provided some evidence, as well as how they got the evidence and how you can find it yourself. The evidence seems pretty compelling. Not to doubt the MPlayer guys, but it's always a wise idea to hear your opponents arguments. If you don't hear your opponents arguments, you may overlook a large hole in yours.
However, there haven't been any arguments from KISS other than "We didnt' do it, we swear, and by the way, if we did it anyways, GPL sucks"
And if GPL is so weak, why do they distribute the rest of the sources used in their stuff?
> How come companies like Kiss cant'be
> punished by Law?
Because the GPL is a rather weak weapon to make their life miserable. They just have to fix the problem or publish the source to their customers and the case collapses. This approach may be very sensible in a civilised society but not a good tool to annoy your neighbour.
The problem is, this part probably will not happen, and KISS knows it. The "small guy" generally does not have the resources to pursue this kind of legal action. This is why I was happy to see SCO take the GPL to task, if it becomes part of their future legal insanity, we may then get a good test case that clears the unknowns up.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
No I don't see a difference.
The codecs various were made available under various licences. MPlayer is redistributing them in violation of those licences.
MPlayer released it's code under a licence. Kiss is redistributing it in violation of the licence.
What is the difference? The fact that the codecs did not require money in exchange for a licence does not change the fact that you have no right to use them except as specified in the licence. The exact same holds for the mplayer source.
They're claiming that after all this time they haven't taken the 10-20 minutes to download the mplayer source and compare it to theirs, and would like to hurl a few offensive comments towards the mplayer developers and the rest of the open source community before investigating if the claims are valid.
Notice how he states that they're not violating the GPL, then proceeds to bash the GPL as if they were. Unless they found something incriminating and went "Of F**K, we violated the GPL," it makes no sense for them to argue that the GPL is weak.
How come companies like Kiss cant'be punished by Law?
Well, see, they can. You yourself stated that you thought up the MPSub format and that this other guy, laaz, implemented it. Well, that means that laaz has *copyright* over that implementation and possibly you have copyright over the format itself (that's a bit more iffy though).
In any case, laaz has obviously released his changes to the mplayer codebase under the GPL. If KISS used that part of the code, but didn't release their derivative work, then they have violated the licensing agreement that gave them access to that MPSub source in the first place. And that means laaz can sue them for copyright violation.
If the RIAA can sue people for it, then developers can too. My advice to anyone who finds this sort of attitude when they get their code stolen: call a lawyer. I know it's not nice, and I know you released the software so that anybody could use it. But if a company steals your work and won't play ball with everybody else, then sue them. You have the right. Your work has been *stolen* here. What the hell are you waiting for?
Despite what idiots say, the GPL has never been tested in court because it's rock-fucking-solid. It cannot be defeated, not really. This is the opinion of some very, very smart people who know law in great detail. And you'll have the support of every developer on the planet if the other side tries to attack the GPL directly.
So do it. If they won't abide by the terms of the license, no matter what you try, then sue the holy shit out of the fuckers. At least you'll be able to force them to stop using your code that way.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And if GPL is so weak, why do they distribute the rest of the sources used in their stuff?
This simply cannot be iterated enough. It's just plain silly to say something like that.
It's called HYPOCRISY.
Gus
Besides, if the license fails, standard copyright laws prevail. Remember, the GPL gives you additional rights over normal copyright law. If the GPL fails, you lose your rights to use the code, not gain them.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Please show what DLL's they distribute without a licence.
...they're getting a donation from me.
Just say the word, guys.
KISS claims to be able to play some files that mplayer can't play without MS's DLLs.. so is KISS also violating MS's IP by distributing MS's DLLs?
Maybe mplayer doesn't have the resources to smack KISS, but MS does.
That sounds more to me like they understand the license and don't intend to violate it. They think its bad commercial business but the market will sort out whether their proprietary player is better than open source.
The Linux community have dealt with KISS before, and KISS are providing the linux kernel sources and busybox. People are building NFS support into their players and other fun stuff.
Reactionary readings of stuff, especially translated stuff that has also been through the radio system and journalists (who like a good story so tend to turn things up 8)) is never a good idea.
So everyone, remember to keep your CVS respository and logs so no one can claim ownership on your code!
Well they still can, but you will have some solid evidence.
Now if there only was a way to timestamp a file in a tamperproof manner, something based on cryptography...
-- Having problems sending big files over the net? Try out Efisto (http://efisto.org)
If we continue to buy these players while this issue remains unresolved, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.
On the other hand, this guy sounds like a typical suit, who doesn't really know how his product gets made and whose main job is to pump it. Somebody else posted that he was once heard bragging about the "2 million lines of code" that went into his product. That's exactly the type of dumb, meaningless puffery you can expect from somebody who really doesn't understand what he's selling at a fundamental level.
He has said that KiSS is looking into the problem. If they discover that their firmware contains open source code in violation of its license, then KiSS should immediately issue a firmware update that removes that code, for good or ill as far as product performance goes. (I'm assuming here that they aren't going to relent on their stance that they cannot, under any circumstances, open their code.)
If they find that they really didn't use MPlayer's code, then I guess what they need to do is show their source code to a representative of MPlayer under strict NDA, such that the MPlayer people can be convinced. Would that solve MPlayer's problem, or would they be unwilling to sign an NDA for this purpose?
Still, this whole "we can't open the code" thing is a little silly. KiSS should at least be considering the possibility of opening their source code at this juncture. They're already beginning to face competition in the form of MPEG-4 enabled DVD players from Korea, Taiwan etc. These things are going to beat them on price, guaranteed. Meanwhile, domestic companies like Linksys have announced similar products for the U.S. market, and I can't see how Sony or Panasonic can be too far behind. Any of the established consumer electronics companies is easily going to shut these guys out of the retail channel for good, just on brand recognition alone.
If they open their source, they open up the possibility of "hacked" variants of their player, sure. But what's to lose?
- Nobody says they have to support a hacked version of their firmware, or even support the player at all once the end user flashes a hacked version.
- By opening their source, they gain extra goodwill and patronage from their core market (geeks)
- Closed source isn't going to prevent anyone from emulating their features. We're already seeing it happen. Who cares how 1337 they are when $50 Korean hardware does the same thing?
- It's unlikely that their firmware is going to be binary compatible with another manufacturer's hardware. In other words, you couldn't download a KiSS firmware and run it on a Taiwanese player unless it was hardware compatible, and I assume the hardware design could still be protected by various intellectual property laws. So open KiSS firmware helps to sell closed KiSS hardware.
- What the hell? Open the source, use all the MPlayer code you want, save on R&D!
Right now, I really could not in good conscience buy a KiSS product. If they opened their source tomorrow, I'd probably be jonesing for one even twice as hard as before.Breakfast served all day!
SCO has killed it's business by doing what they are doing, but the are banking on the lawsuit or Pump and Dump stock scheme.
Kiss do not have that option, They can Company Name their behind goodbye, that's all.
Help fight continental drift.
I was thinking of buying one of those things, but I guess I shall be crossing it off my shopping list.
James
I don't intend to troll, but really, *who cares*? What's the big issue here? Mindshare? Proper credit? Counting ego coup? (Don't spout some "GPL violation" BS, we all *get* that rationale... but there has to be something more to make this news.)
So, here's my thinking: If the code in question is really as simple and trivial as claimed by the MPlayer folks, then why bother facing this Danish DVD group? Don't we expect that trivial code would be written in a nearly identical fashion independently? (I haven't seen the code, just going by what the MPlayer folks have stated about subtitling and the complexity.) And why bother? Is this a zealotry issue... trying to uphold the RMS/FSF flag for its own sake? Or is there something more?
What we've got here is a relatively obscure company (perhaps) taking a relatively small section of admittedly trivial code for their application. If this isn't shaping up to be a legal challenge for the GPL, then it's a waste of time! No good can come of this. My momma always said to "pick your battles", and I don't see the upside of this one...
Fighting every fight for its own sake, or even teh sake of the GPL, is plain stupid and inefficient.
Crap. It sounds like I turned into a flamebait at the end here. *sigh* God forbid Slashdot function as something other than a mental echo-chamber once in a while. We shall see how many steps to "-1".
They are breaking licenses in the same sense that they accuse KISS of breaking licenses. In particular, if you go to their downloads page, you'll notice that they offer downloads of modified dlls for various codecs including wmv, quicktime and realplayer. Likewise they distribute arial fonts. Most of these things can't be distributed without permission from Microsoft, RealNetworks, Apple, etc.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Anyone recall the MySQL vs. NuSphere case? A few reminders:
GPL enforcement goes to court for first time in MySQL case
Affidavit of Eben Moglen on Progress Software vs. MySQL AB Preliminary Injunction Hearing
FAQ on MySQL vs. NuSphere Dispute
This was over 2-3 years ago. But again, the GPL itself, will not be "tested" in court, because violations and violators are easy to find, and prove. Once you violate the GPL, everything else above and beyond that, are U.S. Copyright violations (and in some cases, Lanham Act violations).
Most companies settle out of court, because the cost of public embarrassment would be much more damaging to them. I personally know, because I've got 4 active GPL investigations of my own going on three projects I actively contribute to (and one I am the primary maintainer of), and one company backed WAY down, once they realized the huge financial and public penalty for not complying with our license.
No company wants to take the GPL to court, mostly because if it gets that far, the developers/FSF/community have already done their homework, and can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, a violation. Penalties range from $30k/USD to $150k/USD per violation once the GPL itself is violated and rights to continue using it are stripped. For a site that provides "free downloads" of a product that might contain violating code, that can get quite expensive.
Go to http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ . Notice how they have a variety of codecs for indeo, realplayer, quicktime, wmv, etc. None of these codecs are legally redistributable without permission which mplayer almost certainly does not have.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
GPL is a strong license which has never been defeated court.
if asked.
Help fight continental drift.
[please dont copy this and send it to kiss yourself - it will do more harm than good.]
Dear KiSS,
Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of KiSS technology products (in
particular your DivX compatible DVD players are great!) and I am also a
big fan of open source and free software.
However, I am rather worried by reports I have been reading about
allegations made by the mplayer team regarding unlicensed use of their
intellectual property by KiSS Technologies.
Having read the English translation of a recent radio interview involving
Peter Wilmar Christensen of KiSS I am a bit nervous.
Firstly, I am disappointed that Mr Christensen doesn't seem to respect the
GNU GPL License, but that is not a major concern.
My major worry is that the allegations by the mplayer team don't seem to
be taken seriously. There doesn't seem to be any attempt to show that
KiSS have not mis-appropriated the code from mplayer. Of course the burden
is not with you to prove anything, but as a professional software
developer myself, I know how easy it should be to show your development
history and you can clear the whole thing up in no time. (I also know as a
professional software developer that you _can_ release your source
sometimes, and it often pays off well as a PR exercise)
Until now I have considered KiSS to be a trustworthy company whose
products I have often recommended to others. Unfortunately however, until
this matter is resolved I will no longer do so.
I hope enough people share my view and together we can help you work with
the open source community instead of appearing to ignore them. You
probably already realise that a large number of your customers (at least
all the ones I know!) are open source advocates and would take a dim view
of any who appeared to be working against their community.
Yours,
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
However, if you would have RTFA, you would have seen that:
Oh, so all these proprietary commercial licenses are null and void until they've been tried in court? I can ignore any EULAs because they haven't been tried in court? Great!
FLR
Here's one thing I don't understand,as IANAL. Say the courts struck down the GPL as invalid, why is it SCO and KISS believe that, it instantly makes the source code public domain? Having the GPL invalidated pretty much invalidates thier right to use the code at all doesn't it?
Making something out of nothing : MD5 ("") = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Perhaps, though Microsoft might have licensed the IP to them. There's another IP issue, though.
I there is code in MPlayer that, while legal, violates the agreement that the DVD Consortium forces vendors to sign into (like bypassing region codes and whatnot). KISS Technology is supposed to be a DVD system vendor, and may have signed this document. If they are, in fact, in violation of their DVD Consortium license, the DVD Consortium may revoke their license.
May we never see th
That's a common misconception. You need no license to *use* GPL'ed software. I quote the GNU General Public License:
So you see, there is no need to accept the terms of the GPL to simply use GPL'd software; you only accept the license by redistributing the software.
All's true that is mistrusted
Actually, wasn't the Arial fontset including in Microsoft's old "core fonts" collection. Sure, the official MS downloads have been taken down, but there's nothing to indicate that the licensing terms, which specifically allowed third-party redistribution, have been revoked (even if such a thing were really possible). So they're probably in the clear on that one...
As for everything else, though, I don't disagree....
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
If you lose the court case and the GPL is upheld then you have to either withdraw the product and/or release all of the source code.
If you win the courte case and the GPL is found to be unenforcable then standard copyright takes over. In which case you've distributed copyrighted code without a valid licence and you'll get sued for damages. This outcome is the less likely of the two and would be challanged by every software company in the world (as it would probably make pretty much all software licences uneforcable).
So if you challenge the GPL in court you have the possible outcomes of loosing or loosing worse. Not a really appealing set of options that.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
from the interview transcription by Peter Wilmar Christensen. (Kiss).
"Microsoft Media Player is the application used to display movies."
Hmmm... I never knew there was a Linux implementation of Microsoft media player.
Having read many of the comments by Peter Wilmar Christensen it is quite clear that he has no idea what he is talking about, and obviously no idea what is going on behind the scenes as development at Kiss.
This is really quite a shame, I was previously considering getting one of the Kiss machines. After this news I will be having second thoughts about doing it. At the end of the day they are making their money on the hardware they are selling. It really makes no difference whether the source code is open or closed for something like this (I know this is open to debate!)
At the end of the day, regardless of license GPL or not, it is plain unfair to steal someone elses code and pass it off as your own.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Because the GPL is a rather weak weapon to make their life miserable. They just have to fix the problem or publish the source to their customers and the case collapses. This approach may be very sensible in a civilised society but not a good tool to annoy your neighbour.
Bullshit. If you were a megacorp doing this, and knowing you have a watertight case, you'd have a) an injunction stopping them from distributing the code (literally freezing their business), b) you'd sue for both damages based on the profits *they've* made plus c) tort and possibly even more for d) fraud since they now represent themselves as authors of the code.
There is nothing in the GPL, or in copyright law that say everything is fine if they begin following the licence. In fact, they can still be sued, convicted and lose the right to use any of that software (not to mention any derivative work, ouch) for any reason.
The reason it doesn't happen is because it takes a lot of time and money to pursue it in court, money most Linux developers don't have up front, and the awarded damages are unknown. Not to mention many companies didn't know, and so the FSF usually cuts them a deal - they start following the GPL, and the FSF will leave them alone.
But I sure wish someone would actually do it, and bitchslap some company real good with felony copyright violation. Just to show that there are teeth, even if they don't go sinking into anyone that steps too close.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'll hazard a guess here:
The Manageing Director has no clue about this, and is going on what his developers told him.
Developers saw MPlayer as an easy solution to their problem and figured they wouldn't get caught, but were wrong, and are now desparately covering their arses.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Has anybody considered the possibility that KISS honestly doesn't know that it is infringing? They probably hired a lazy contractor that thought to themself "Why should I write this from scratch, when there is free code out there I can steal?" Hence, KISS may beleive they really own the code, while the contractor that did the infringing is long gone...
I expect to see a lot more of this happening, especially as more and more software development is shipped overseas to countries that don't have a long tradition of IP protection.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Which is why you should put at least one obscure easter egg in the source, which is hard to find on casual inspection, but easy to trigger if you know how.
Imagine the blushing faces of KISS when Gabucino triggers an easter egg in the KISS player's subtitle code. Now who stole what from who again?
My memory is a little vague, but I do remember some incident where a case was one by a company because one of the programmers triggered an easter egg in the defendant's code, which blatantly showed that the defendant _had_ been stealing code. Can someone who has better recollection than me refresh my memory?
Actually, GNE's not EFF.
Please. DDoS, mailbombs? Only if your primitive mind can't come up with anything better. Me, I've still got some Anthrax leftover from my recent SCO fan mail mission.
True story.
The Linux community have dealt with KISS before, and KISS are providing the linux kernel sources and busybox. People are building NFS support into their players and other fun stuff.
:-(
KISS supports Vorbis and DivX. I will give them that -- these are folks that seem to tend more towards the OSS side of things.
On the other hand, the mplayer folks have been burned before by folks ripping off their code (and subsequent attempts to cover up said infringement through obfuscation), and are probably extremely ready to blow up over this. I suspect that, in their shoes, I'd be in about the same state of mind.
I kind of wish that someone like ESR or Perens, someone respected by the folks involved, could step in and lend a cooling touch, maybe mediate a bit. The FSF only seems to get involved when it's software that they own the copyright on.
May we never see th
...there is some junior software engineer at KISS sweating like a pregnant lesbian nun in a fish shop right now.
You're supposed to link that to SCO's website when you do that, so that Google will up their pagerank for that term. E.G. so that eventually SCO will be the most relevant result when you search for various obscenities.
;)
Why? Because this is slashdot, and we have no lives
What is Sigma Designs relationship with Kiss?
.
...
I found reference's to Sigma Designs alleged GPL infringment on the web sigma infringement
That article is relating to a file called "khwl.o" not sure what it does, but after looking at an ascii dump of the KiSS kernel I found references to it
khwl.o
Sigma
I started looking through the Ascii dumps of these files. Someone more qualified than me ought to take a closer look because Im seeing stuff that looks like code from a bunch of different sources in their, Maybe some of it is on different licenses but I am seeing possible stuff from things like NXClient, Microwindows and a bunch of other interesting looking stuff.
The initial thought was that Sigma designs (they seem to make Multimedia Chips & Hardware etc) maybe supplied KiSS with drivers for their chips and this got merged into the code without them knowing. That might mean that Sigma are mainly at fault here.
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
He also adds that the GPL is a weak license which has never been tested in court.
And I take it their software licenses have been tested in court?
Tell SCO! Tell SCO!
It should be easy to convince SCO that their code is in mplayer, too. Imagine, what a wonderful world, offenders suing offenders!
A little more behind the scenes negotiations before making this an even bigger issue might have been prudent.
NO. It HAS to hurt.
If it doesn't hurt, companies will have no reason not to use GPL code in their proprietary products. The price to pay for the violation of the GPL, the risk HAS GOT to be high. They have to see that this will burn their greedy fingers, so the MPlayer people did the only right thing. Such behaviour simply cannot be tolerated.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
In Denmark (I expect that the company has a clausule on wanting every dispute settled in a Danish court) you can get a free process, if the prosecutor (sorry about my bad English) has an income lower than 220,000 DKK. Hopefully the mplayer-guys are "poor" (European Standards, you know), but I think a non-profit-organisation says it all?
(yes this can be compared with sex)
Eh what? The GPL has absolutely nothing to do with "public domain" - quite the opposite in fact. Its leveraging copywrite (the Berne Convention view of it) in order to enforce various conditions upon the licensee (ie, you must make it available under the same conditions that you got it, etc)
If it was built on the concept of public-domain, there would be absolutely no way to enforce those, as the concept of public-domain explicity removes all restrictions.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
erm, what? If the GPL is not valid you go back to plain, boring old copyright - i.e., you'd need explicit (probably written) permission to copy. If you don't play by GPL rules, you play by the old rules, not no rules at all. At least, that's my understanding of it. (I, ANAL)
Semper en excreta sumus solum profundum