Maui X-Stream: GPL Violations, Lies, and Damn Lies

Jeremy writes "Drunkenbatman is at it again. This time he takes apart Maui X-Stream and all the who and whats that go along with it. Deconstructing Maui X-Stream has GPL Violations with reproducable proof (not done this myself), chat logs, and double talk from the CEO's and supposed authors of the software."

Comments

Coral Cache

[dagnabit]

It's already getting slow...

http://www.drunkenblog.com.nyud.net:8090/drunkenbl og-archives/000534.html

Re:Its not such a big deal

[Laurentiu]

You, sir, are a troll. From the horse's (or, more appropriately, goat's) mouth (aka the GPL FAQ):

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

Q: Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

Does the GPL allow me to develop a modified version under a nondisclosure agreement?
Yes. For instance, you can accept a contract to develop changes and agree not to release your changes until the client says ok. This is permitted because in this case no GPL-covered code is being distributed under an NDA.
You can also release your changes to the client under the GPL, but agree not to release them to anyone else unless the client says ok. In this case, too, no GPL-covered code is being distributed under an NDA, or under any additional restrictions.
The GPL would give the client the right to redistribute your version. In this scenario, the client will probably choose not to exercise that right, but does have the right.

overwhelming evidence! Great article!

[xiando]

This was a unusually well written, well-based article with a lot of good facts. The proof is overwhelming and is clearly accurate. Maui X-Stream, Inc. really got their pants pulled down like they deserve.

Re:Its not such a big deal

[justforaday]

While your answer is correct, you don't seem to have addressed the OP's (OT's?) argument, which is that he's supposedly required to release the source code including his changes. This is only true if they were selling their modified versions to other people. Since they were in no way (that was mentioned) selling compiled binaries or modified versions of anything, they are under no obligation to publish those changes.

In short, feel free to do whatever you want with GPL'd code in house, just be sure you're ready to give all those changes back to the community if you decide to sell the product you made with it.

Re:The problem is the penalty

[/ASCII]

This has happened multiple times, and the infringing company usually ends up posting the source.

The original MPlayer devellopers wanted to dual license MPlayer because they felt exactly the way you do after the MPlayer vs Kiss debacle. When it was discovered that Kiss had stolen GPL'ed code from MPlayer, they first flat out denied it, they even went as far as to imply that MPlayer had somehow stolen code from a KISS DVD-player. But in the end Kiss where forced to comply with the GPL and offer source downloads.

Re:The problem is the penalty

[hacker]

"PS: Not trolling, genuinely curious. All the focus seems to be on "Is the GPL enforcable", not "Who shall enforce it". And IMHO, both are important."

Its simple. Once violated, your rights to continue to use the GPL are revoked. This means every copy you allow to be downloaded, sold, or given away is now a US Copyright Violation, subject to $20k to $200k in penalties per-copy. Its easier to enforce if they filed their copyright with the US Copyright office (we did to fight just the same thing).

Most GPL violations settle out of court because the costs associated with going to court are enormous. Its hard to assess "damages" against a GPL project where the code is given away, copied, shared, downloaded, etc. for free.

In some cases, if the project taken by a commercial entity is used to "compete" with the free version (i.e. they claim they wrote it), it is also a "Lanhan Act" violation, or "False designation of origin".

It gets really ugly when the GPL is violated, but the good thing is that once violated, the GPL is no longer even an issue, its a clear-cut US Copyright violation.

Re:Commercial software pirates

[hacker]

"I know of dozens of "appliance like" devices that are like this. When you ask the vendor they say "we wrote it all" and just by the look and field you know Squid/BSD/OpenSSL/SSH are at minimum inside."

This is called a "Lanham Act Violation" (false designation of origin), and can be prosecuted under the law. If some company takes your code and claims they wrote it, you have legal grounds to chew them into dust.

Re:Legal threats.

[eventhorizon5]

"Well I got legal threats from MXS too for my research (I was the main tech analyst behind drunkenbatman's article). I'm going to scan the letters and post them somewhere hehe ;)"

Let me add a little info to my post - do you know what they were complaining about? Jpeg images. Of a hex editor viewing strings in their binaries. Wow that's pretty illegal isn't it? lol - I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I got that. Just like MXS's lawyer said, "these links represent illegal activity" and earlier Jim Kartes told me that what I was doing was "extremely illegal". hehe ;)

-eventhorizon

Re:This happens more often than you think...

[hacker]

"I am very curious about why you should have trouble moving this case forward and/or obtaining representation. It looks to me like a shark would pick up this case and bloody this company for a big, juicy paycheck in a hearbeat, with no upfront costs to you."

Mostly because Wendy moved on to work for the EFF and all attempts to get a replacement pro-bono attorney from the FSF (with as much clue as Wendy) were unsuccessful.

And since we are wholly self-funded, putting up the retainer costs to talk to an attorney for 3-4 hours at his dime is not something we can just do, even if he decides to take the case as a "Slam Dunk" on his own merit.

Also, we're giving the company who is infringing some time to hang themselves while we gather more information. They're now selling "Their Solution(tm)" to a pretty serious mobile vendor who is incorporating it into ROM on their upcoming devices. If this is true, a lot of companies and partners are in a world of hurt.

It'll happen, it just takes time.

Re:"Drunkenblog" isn't much of an authority

[eventhorizon5]

I'm the owner of Tliquest.net, and me and the drunkenblog guy collaborated on this issue for some time now. Most of my research on the tliquest site had to be pulled due to legal threats (I don't have any legal support at this time), but he could handle being sued. About the Java player, there has been lots of speculation on what they have used. I'll post my research log right here, so you can see what still needs to be found (if we need to; unless MXS somehow comes clean):

From primary archive,
http://www.tliquest.net/mxs
There are 20 supposed mirrors of my site, and I'll find out where they are soon.
---------
Listing of projects that VX30 has taken code from:

XviD 0.9.2 (all VX30 versions use this Xvid version)
Media Player Classic (VX30 live also uses MPC's webserver)
LAME (old 2004 version used version 3.93)
Possibly Filezilla (found a whole bunch of error messages from it)
Nero Freeware Advanced Audio (AAC) Decoder
Liba52
Ogg Vorbis code (it contains libVorbis, but that is under a BSD license; they haven't given credit, so it's a violation)
but - the vorbis streaming code seems to be part of another non-Xiph app

What I still don't know:
-origination of Xvid encoder frontend they used for the original VX30 and later versions
-origination of audio/video streamer server they used
-origination of Java-based decoder client
-which ones of these make up the Live Server app
-which app the threaded Ogg Vorbis code is from
---------

-eventhorizon