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: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:"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