Maui X-Stream at it Again?

Goyuix writes "In their latest commercial venture, Maui X-Stream, the now infamous company behind Cherry OS, has recently launched a suite of tools that once again takes advantage of GPL'd code to get their dirty work done... This time it is a set of video encoding, streaming and display tools. A choice quote from SourceForge: 'There are boundled dshow filters, string, toolbars, dialogs, command line switches, etc..., which can be verified easily by just running the applications and taking a look, or a bit harder by analysing the memory dump'. Is the situation getting worse or is community just getting better at finding the violators?"

Comments

Worse

[breakbeatninja]

I think the situation is definitely getting worse AND the open source community is becoming more adament about exposing this sort of behavior. The problem is that all open source licensing relies on honesty and many commercial vendors don't know the meaning of it, so when the two sides clash, open source may get the short end of the stick.

Re:Not Better, Just Smarter

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

On the smart side, he's gotten >100,000 people to look at his birdbath multiple times, where there hasn't been a single story on Slackware / debian / enlightenment / Nethack / etc on the Slashdot front page in weeks.

Possible he's running Google ads somewhere nearby?

try out the live chat!

[croddy]

Chat Information Please wait for a site operator to respond.
Chat Information You are now chatting with 'Gene'
Gene: Hello
you: where are you distributing the vx30 source code pursuant to the conditions of the GPL
you: hello?
you: a simple URL is all that is required.
Gene: If you knew what you were talking I would talk to you but...
Chat Information Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

Re:try out the live chat!

[_Sharp'r_]

You know, for some websites, live chat is the most expensive part of ths site... all those call center reps to pay... not that you could slashdot a call center and run up a huge bill, could you ...?

Hopefully not a growing trend

[coupland]

My question is, what's to stop this sort of behaviour? Most free software projects operate under a tight budget as it is, how many have the funds to sue anyone who misappropriates their GPLed code? If every victim has to solicit donations to fund a lawsuit then what's to be done? Sure the FSF can probably help, but I doubt they'd have the resources to defend the GPL on multiple fronts if violators launched a wholesale attack.

Re:Not Better, Just Smarter

[Wiser87]

I thought the violations in their video products had been known for a while? IIRC, there was a discussion about it in the PearPC forums. Interestingly enough, one of the people who looked into it said that if it weren't for the fact that it was in violation of the GPL, their products would actually be pretty good.

Time for a court injunction?

[davidwr]

Is it time to get a court injunction?

Perhaps the time is right for a "GPL Clearninghouse" whereby authors can "contract" limited enforcement responsibilities to the clearinghouse. If PearPC and the items currently in question were both enforced by this clearinghouse, the clearinghouse would find it a lot easier to enjoin these people from ever violating the GPL again with respect to ANY code under its management.

Judge, to the officers of Maui X-Streme:
"You are hereby ordered to comply with the licensing restrictions of any and all code which now, or in the future, is owned or managed by The Clearinghouse, provided that The Clearinghouse informs you or the general public that it is managing the code in question. Failure to do so will be contempt of court, punishable by jail time. This order will be reviewed every 24 months. Do you understand?"

Re:Getting worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly just one company. The linux kernel, busybox and iptables seem to be popular among manufacturers of SOHO network devices. Sadly the GPL is not as popular.

The various open source media player programs also attract gadget developers who don't care enough about licensing.

Last but not least there is a trend to attempt legal and technical trickery to circumvent the GPL requirements. Companies which are completely aware of the license requirements are nevertheless building business models around open source and either try to make the GPL benefits too expensive for interested people or try to delay source releases indefinitely by continuously making small source management "mistakes".

Re:I may be a bit late to the party here -

[DJCacophony]

A great book to read on this subject is "Open Source - The Unofficial White Papers". It has some great papers about building businesses off open source. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764 546600/qid=1115078180/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/002-2477466-1646408?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Re:I may be a bit late to the party here -

[slamb]

> > I can sell compiled binaries of grep for a billion dollars each if I can find someone willing to pay that for them. The GPL allows it.

> Um, would you care to state where in the license this is explicitly allowed? Because I can cite where it's explicitly prohibited.

No, you can't. The GPL is explicitly designed to allow you to do this, as stated in the preamble:

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

I suspect you're thinking of this paragraph:

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

But you're not required to give the source to anyone who doesn't have the binary, and you're not required to give the binary away.

i called maui x stream

[Ravenrage]

and when i asked about when they are going to release the code i was told quote "if those lazy bitches on slashdot bothered to check the evidence they would know it contains no gpl code" and when i asked about the fact that the claim can be verified i was told "fuck you" and then they hung up

Their Con Is Working?

[wan-fu]

Assuming that this really is a GPL violation, then I'm surprised they've already got some big names to fall for the con. On their own website, they make mention that VX30 was used by HFPA. I was incredulous of course and decided to do some fact checking. Well, turns out, it's true! The video gallery over at the Golden Globe awards has an icon for VX30 which links back to MXS.

Here's what I think would be the most hilarious thing of all:

1. the code turns out to be a GPL violation.
2. HFPA gets mad, makes a ruckus - especially to the movie industry
3. movie industry sues MXS
4. ???
5. Slashdotters celebrate and rejoice over the movie industry suing someone

Wouldn't that be something?

Re:Or the phone number...

[techfury90]

I decided to have a little bit of fun using myiprelay on aim calling them up (I know I forgot the toll free number and used the 808 one, sorry):

My IP Relay: . Please hold for the next available operator. PLS ENTER THE NBR U WANT TO DIAL GA
techfury90 : 8086615699 GA
My IP Relay: IP RELAY RO 9560F DIALING 808 661 5699 PLS HD
My IP Relay: RING 1 (F) GOOD AFTERNOON
My IP Relay: (EXPLAINING RELAY) GA
8:30 PM
techfury90 : hello i would like to know where the GPL source code to your VX30 software and cherryos is located ga
techfury90 : as far as i know, you aren't distributing it, which is a GPL violation.
techfury90 : ga
My IP Relay: IS THIS A RXX MARKETING
My IP Relay: HELLO HELLO HELLO (HUNG UP ANOTHER CALL QQ) GA

rxx marketing? wtfbomb.

Re:What about these guys?

[Trumpetgod2k1]

Wow. The screen shots are of an out-of-the box KDE install running OpenOffice. The title bars, although kinda blury, definatly say "OpenOffice.org" in all of them. The filename of the "Writer" screenshot is "openofficewriter.jpg." These guys didn't even try.

Re:Getting worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's hardly just one company. The linux kernel, busybox and iptables seem to be popular among manufacturers of SOHO network devices. Sadly the GPL is not as popular."

SOHO = Linksys im assuming, and except for the part where they openly admit that its linux/iptables/busybox and fully offer everything for download on their site, youre dead on. big difference from using GPLd code and saying you wrote it... BIG difference.