DrDOS Inc Breaking GPL

Bob Dobbs writes "DR-DOS 8.1 (DrDOS Inc) came out at the begining of this month, however instead of an upgrade to DR-DOS 8.0 the new product is based on work available on the internet. The work includes shareware utilities, a badly patched version of the kernel work by Udo Kuhnt, drivers (Samsung, ESS) and utilities from FreeDOS and others (e.g. pkzip). Full information on the FreeDOS site. (Cheers FreeDOS!)"

Comments

Re:This is bad?

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, if you read the FreeDOS page, the FreeDOS author only requests that Dr. DOS Inc. do something about complying with the GPL. i.e. He's asking them to distribute a copy of the GNU General Public License with the software, and make an offer to provide the source code to anyone who asks, as per the GPL. So all that's really required (assuming they haven't changed the FreeDOS software) is that Caldera be ready to send people over to the FreeDOS site, and perhaps burn a CD or two for a fee.

The incredulous part of the whole thing is that the page makes it sound like a major step back for Dr. DOS. Instead of moving forward on the source base they have, they're moving backwards by kit-bashing a bunch of old OSS software and then trying to sell it. Or at least, that's what I got out of TFA.

Re:This is bad?

[mrchaotica]

The difference is that violating the GPL makes the information less Free, whereas violating most other copyrights and/or licenses makes the information more free.

Re:mod me redundant but...

[Pedrito]

What's the issue? Remember: GPL sez: "If I give you binaries, I have to give you code..."

And if you RTFA, you'll see that's PRECISELY the issue. Not only are they not releasing the source code with the FreeDOS binaries they've included, they're not even mentioning that they're GPLed.

Re:This is bad?

[suitepotato]

The difference is that violating the GPL makes the information less Free, whereas violating most other copyrights and/or licenses makes the information more free.

The ultimate point of all this nonsense about information wanting to be free is that no one wants to pay anything for anything so ANY license makes the information less free because a license automatically signifies it is in some way tied to someone who owns it more than anyone else. Truly free information has no owners. We used to call that public domain. The GPL and so on is just a way for the cheapskates in amature socialist garb to have their cake and eat it too, but eventually the dogma generates the karma that runs it over.

Calling anything free with a license is just self-deception and there because those using it want to have the power of Intellectual Property OWNERSHIP and still look cool because they are LETTING people not pay money. It's not free as long as someone has to LET me use it.

Re:This is bad?

[Waffle Iron]

If it's okay for me to download music from russian sites at a nickel a track or watch movies from bit torrent trackers (and I do both of these readily and happily), who am I (and most of us) to criticise a little GPL violation here and there?

If you, an insignificant individual, do those things, at least you're behaving consistently (if not necessarilly legally).

If a commercial software vendor does those things, while at the same time demanding that people pay for *their* goods and abide by *their* licenses, then they are being big hypocrites.

Re:Jumping the Gun

[ctid]

At least give them 10 days or so to get their stuff in order, THEN post about how they're screwing stuff up.

I can't agree with this. In my opinion, they started screwing up at the point when they started trying to assimilate GPLed software into their commercial product. They could have read the GPL at that point and understood the requirements of the licence and then decided whether they still wanted to proceed. There must have been a significant amount of time between starting the process of creating DRDOS 8.1 and actually releasing the software; if there's a clock ticking, it starts when they started, not when the FreeDOS guys found them out. I don't think that the thing about not understanding the GPL holds water for a commercial company - it beggars belief that you would create a product based on code from someone outside the organisation without involving a lawyer at some point to check it out.

Re:This is bad?

[arkanes]

You're creating a false relationship here between people who think that copyright infringment isn't theft, and people who think that makes copyright infringment okay.

It's not theft, but it's not okay (there are lot of things that aren't theft that are still both illlegal and wrong), and they should comply with the GPL, and people shouldn't download stuff illegally from P2P applications.

Note that none of that means that the music industry isn't stupid for understanding the competition they face from illegal downloads and addressing it reasonably (you can be within your legal rights but still be stupid), or that it's not legitimate to legally buy your music from overseas where it's cheaper.