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P2P vs. The Clones
smash writes "Rebranding software then loading it with spyware and adware (or just selling it for profit) has become a recent trend with oversea individuals trying to make a few bucks. We all remember the KaZaA Gold, don't we? Shareaza, which recently went open source under the GPL, has been subject to a similar type of theft by a company going by the name RockSoft Development. Surprisingly enough, their software labelled as 'Go Music' hasn't been pulled from C|Net's Download.com after more than a week."
The solution, unfortunately, would seem to be to add more restrictions to the licenses, similar to how the you-cannot-sell-this-software-for-more-than-the-co st-of-copying-and-the-media clause works.
What clause? Gnucleus, Shareaza, and eMule are licensed under the GNU General Public License. This license lets a redistributor sell copies or digital deliveries of a covered program provided that the source code is either included or available at cost.
This doesn't change the main point of your argument, but you are slightly misinformed about what the GPL says about selling software. The GPL allows you to take the software and sell it at any price you want, bundled or not. However, you must either
A) include the source with sold binary, or
B) make it available seperately at additional cost.
It is just this additional cost that is limited to reasonable compensation.
I'll give it a shot...
Back in days of yore, Kazaa was given away for free for people to download to connect to the fast track netword. Then someone came along and modded the program, and created kazaa-lite. This gave users many added benefits, and made getting files easier. But, the changes were freely available, and then a company took those changes, renamed them, "gave" them away on a website that required your email address, and they bundled a ton of spyware crap in (not that the regular Kazaa didn't already start out with enough of that as it was.
If you want to see the evil that is Kazaa Gold, it still exists, and can be found here... just don't download it =) forms of Kazaa Lite can still be found if anyone must use the Fast Track network... =) hope this helped.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Doesn't the original KaZaA client have it's own spyware? I don't see a reason to cry over someone robbing a company of spyware revenue in favor of their own spyware revenue. Now, if someone robs the client to remove the spyware altogether (like KaZaA Lite supposedly did), I'm all for that.
Kazaa came bundled with a client for BDE which was used to sell your spare cpu cycles to someone else. Basically like a huge distributed computing project, that the end user had absolutely no idea about.. I believe this single act kick-started the whole anti-adware/spyware movement.
I'd recommend using KazaaLite K++, which has removed all of the extra FUD. Although, good luck finding a legitimate download. 98% of the files on Kazaa are fakes, planted by the RIAA to dissuade you from downloading music. In the end, it is not going to matter what client you use, if all of the files on the network are bogus.
In the context of computers, "pirate" is a shorter name for "copyright infringer." It's been this way since the first Apple ][ game was copied from one floppy to another. Deal with it.
In this context, "pirate" refers to a roaming stealer of ships as much as "mouse" refers to a furry animal. When you start closing your "windows" to stop the draft coming through your monitor, you can start getting incensed by the use of the word "pirate."
Actually there is some precedent for being charged with stealing free things, for instance in some states its a crime to steal a free newspaper, granted you need to take a bunch for it to count, but if you take 100s they can charge you...
You're quite correct. Many people do not understand the GPL. There is no problem at all selling GPLd software for whatever price you like, and you don't even have to be the author. This is a fact.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck