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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."
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.
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.
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..."
...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!!!
Neither scenario paints a pretty picture of Kiss Technology. Are they a publically traded company?
ThisIsAnExampleAccountGL@yahoo.com
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?
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
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?"
You mean, whether Kiss implimented MPlayer's unique, never seen in the outside world, never used in a video file, subtitle format called MPsub, all at once, or over time?
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
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...
But why they were even looking to see how KISS's stuff worked is a bit curious.
Because, when you develop open source software, and suddenly some closed source company suddenly 'develops' software for their set top boxes that has very similar features to your open source software, you should check using simple tools (like strings) to see if anything matches. Its not hard to look for certain strings, and you certainly not violating any laws by doing it.
You aren't reverse engineering the software.
Open Source developers have every right to protect their projects.
What, you don't think Microsoft, and every other closed source software developer does this to products which are very similar to theirs?
How else are you supposed to discover when someone steals your work?
Brielle
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!
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.
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.