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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."
I believe Arben. He just seems like such a trustworthy, honest person.
Just kidding obviously. I read through this last night (skipped a few parts here and there), but wow, talk about talking out your asshole! I can't wait to see if Maui X-Stream launches any lawsuits against drunkenbatman (or anyone else). Should be entertainment on the level of the SCO fiasco if it happens.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
This smacks of that Phantom/HardOCP thing. As long as their lawsuit is "pending" or they're persuing "legal options," their customers (are there any? ok, fine, potential customers) will think this guy is lying. They're just trying to put off the unavoidable death of their pathetic company.
That's why this keeps happening.
If I do this, and get caught...so what? What's the penalty? Exactly who is going to prosecute?
What if this CEO came right out and said "Yup, copied the whole damn thing from Sourceforge. What are you going to do about it?" What happens next?
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
GPL violations seem to be getting more and more common. Take for instance eMule, where an eMule+ developer is knowingly breaking the GPL while working for a proprietary company called MetaCafe:c =72668 (login probably required)
http://forum.emule-project.net/index.php?showtopi
http://forums.metacafe.com/viewtopic.php?t=139
The worst part is probably that the eMule+ folks, who forked the eMule codebase and should be well aware of how the GPL works, are directly contributing to this violation.
GPL violations are a lot more common than most people think.
Just because it doesn't hit the mainstream media doesn't mean that thousands (yes, thousands of OSS projects out there are being actively violated by commercial enterprises). A few years ago I caught Sony doing this and reported about it (picked up by Slashdot here based on my account).
But that was relatively small potatoes to another GPL violation we've had to deal with. The CEO of a mobile company (who shall remain nameless, thousands know who he is) took our code, stripped our names and attribution out, removed the COPYING file (our copy of the GPL license), put his name all over it, and claimed he wrote it. He also waffled and lied over the years about which parts of our project he was and was not using. His stories changed back and forth (and I have all of the emails confirming these wishy-washy statements).
When we started seeing companies giving away binary versions of an application that looked suspisciously like ours (and I mean pixel-for-pixel identical) without any source, attribution or links back to the GPL, we started calling those companies and requesting the source for compliance. Since these companies had no idea who we were, they referred us back to the company they bought it from.. the original one who took our code from us outside of compliance with the GPL.
Then the threats started coming in... from the CEO of the company that originally took our source. My favorite quote from him:
We were appointed an amazing attorney by the FSF, and she represented us well. I even went to NYC to meet with this CEO with Wendy to discuss how they could bring themselves into compliance. The CEO insisted that "..the GPL is not a license, its subject to interpretation... it was never reviewed by real attorneys or tested in court", and then proceeded to tell me to fire my attorney, right in front of her, because he said she wasn't giving me correct information about the law. Yeah ok, except she TEACHES law, and this CEO does what again? Oh yeah, steals other people's products for his own profitous gain.
He continued to threaten us for contacting his "partners" (who were also not transferred the GPL when he sold them "his" product [using our code]). Of course his threats fell on deaf ears, since it is our duty to require compliance with our code no matter who uses it.
The case goes on now, 4+ years later, but some interesting facts have come to light and we may have some official corporate backing from someone he believes is a partner of his... this is FAR from over, and he has absolutely no idea what mountain of legal stress is heading his way.
Wendy has moved on to the EFF now, and we have some new legal contacts at the FSF to try persue this further, but they're busy with lots of other cases.
If anyone is interested in hearing more details, feel free to contact me. If you want to support our case against companies like this, please visit our donation page and contribute to help us fund more legal support (or just because your appreciate our work: Don't forget to check out our Plucker eye-candy page).
True, but it takes a judge to administer the paddle once your pants are down.
The people in charge of the groups that own the code should get together and give permission for something like FSF to pursue this case in court (FSF has a few lawyers, I believe), and FSF gets to keep any money won in the suit. This appears to be an open-and-shut case. X-Stream gets shut down, FSF can try to get a lot of money from them, and the general public gets the source code to this nice (if stolen) software. Sounds like a win-win proposition to me.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization. But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL. Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
What does this "written offer valid for any third party" mean? Does that mean everyone in the world can get the source to any GPL'ed program no matter what?
"Valid for any third party" means that anyone who has the offer is entitled to take you up on it. If you commercially distribute binaries not accompanied with source code, the GPL says you must provide a written offer to distribute the source code later. When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer. The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.
The GPL says that modified versions, if released, must be "licensed ... to all third parties." Who are these third parties? ,p>
Section 2 says that modified versions you distribute must be licensed to all third parties under the GPL. "All third parties" means absolutely everyone--but this does not require you to *do* anything physically for them. It only means they have a license from you, under the GPL, for your version.
We are the 198 proof..
I was the main analyst behind the application/binary analysis in the article - about 1/5 of the way down you'll see my first credit:
:)
"Ryan Thoryk (aka EventHorizon), a Unix and Network Specialist in Illinois, is the one who put all of the hard work into peeking around the original VX30 binaries"
Yay - finally my hard work is getting mindshare
-eventhorizon
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
Now a days, some bloggers are more real journalists than journalists. (in USA at least) Just checking facts and understanding the issue makes a blogger more qualfied than most of the press in this country.
Journalists/Press people have their job because they have the right face, hair, and name to be on TV. Other thant that, they are pretty much brain dead.
Haven't you noticed a lot of the big name news channels are actually reading news right from blogs now. CNN,MSNBC,etc have spots where they actually show the website and read the words off it. Its actually lame as shit. I think MSNBC has hot chicks that do it.