Debian Kicks Jörg Schilling

An anonymous reader writes "Debian's cdrecord maintainers announced that they have had enough of Jörg Schilling and kicked his program suite cdrtools out of Debian, introducing a free fork of his no longer free cdrtools." I've put the message below, along with some other links. So, why the fork? CD/DVD burning is a complicated business that needs a lot of knowledge, so forking such a big collection isn't a step to be taken lightly. It requires a lot of development effort that could be put to better use elsewhere.

In the past, we, the Debian maintainers of cdrtools, had a good and mutually cooperative relationship with Jörg Schilling. He even commented on Debian bug reports, which is one of the best things an upstream maintainer can do. Naturally, there were occasionally disagreements, but this is normal.

Unfortunately Sun then developed the CDDL and Jörg Schilling released parts of recent versions of cdrtools under this license. The CDDL is incompatible with the GPL. The FSF itself says that this is the case as do people who helped draft the CDDL. One current and one former Sun employee visited the annual Debian conference in Mexico in 2006. Danese Cooper clearly stated there that the CDDL was intentionally modelled on the MPL in order to make it GPL- incompatible. For everyone who wants to hear this first-hand, we have video from that talk available.

Here is the FSF position about the CDDL. This thread contains statements on the issue made by Debian people; for more context also see the other mails in that thread. In short -- the CDDL has extra restrictions, which the GPL does not allow. Jörg has a different opinion about this and has repeatedly stated that the CDDL is not incompatible, interpreting a facial expression in the above-mentioned video, calling us liars and generally appearing unwilling to consider our concerns (he never replied to the parts where we explained why it is incompatible). As he has basically ignored what we have said, we have no choice but to fork. While the CDDL *may* be a free license, we never questioned if it is free or not, as it is not our place to decide this as the Debian cdrtools maintainers. However, having been approved by OSI doesn't mean it's ok for any usage, as Jörg unfortunately seems to assume. There are several OSI-approved licenses that are GPL-incompatible and CDDL is one of them. That is and always was our point.

For our fork we used the last GPL-licensed version of the program code and killed the incompatibly licensed build system. It is now replaced by a cmake system, and the whole source we distribute should be free of other incompatibilities, as to the best of our current knowledge.

Anyone who wants to help with this fork, particularly developers of other distributions, is welcome to join our efforts. You can contact us on IRC, server irc.oftc.net, channel #debburn, or via mail at debburn-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org. Here is our svn repository.

Comments

I've wondered about Debian

[Bombcar]

Won't the GPLv3 be incompatible with the GPL?

Is the MPL the Mozilla Public License?

[bgfay]

They refer to MPL in the message and I wondered if that's that Mozilla license and if that is really incompatible with the FSF.

Re:Is the MPL the Mozilla Public License?

[OmegaBlac]

Yes it is the Mozilla Public License. From the "GPL-Incompatible, Free Software Licenses" section of one of the links posted in the summary/article:

Mozilla Public License (MPL)

This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.

However, MPL 1.1 has a provision (section 13) that allows a program (or parts of it) to offer a choice of another license as well. If part of a program allows the GNU GPL as an alternate choice, or any other GPL-compatible license as an alternate choice, that part of the program has a GPL-compatible license.

Re:Storm meet teacup

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Because most of the thousands of OSS cd tools are merely front-ends to cdrecord.

CDDL

[mrsam]

Anyone who kept track of Joerg Schilling, and his prominent ego, was able to clearly see the inevitable fork from quite a distance away. Schilling was another one of those types -- like the dude who was running some obscure piece of code known as xfree86 -- whose success and prominence as the author of a popular free software package went completely into his head.

No, this should not be suprising news to anyone who's been following LKML. You could've predicted this a long time ago. What is really interesting here is the revelation that Sun explicitly made CDDL intentionally incompatible with GPL. That is, what I think, the newsworthy fact, and should be a wake up call to all the Sun fan club who've been slobbering all over themselves on the account of Sun's promises of releasing Java as free software.

Reading this just underscores the fact that you just can't trust Sun, and nobody should hold their breath on account of Java.

Re:CDDL

[krmt]

t's funny because when the Apache Software Foundation has a license that is incompatible with the GPL, no one gave them grief, but SUN moves to one and suddenly they're evil...

Debian actually quietly engaged the Apache Foundation about their license too and worked to resolve issues there as well.

Re:CDDL

[r00t]

"If that's all it was, then why has no one else been able to create an equivalent tool to Joerg's? You make it sound like Joerg was all hot air, and not a extremely technically cable person."

Who said anything about technical capability?

Well, I will: Joerg is moderately capable. His advantage is that he personally owns many expensive and out-of-production burners, and that his employer (the lovely MP3 patent holders) he has an unusual ability to get vendors to cooperate in giving out hardware information under NDA.

Joerg is a stubborn bone-headed idiot when it comes to user interface, hardware abstractions, and portability. He has the gall to claim that users actually like to specify all burners by a 1980s-style set of three numbers, and that users actually like running the -scanbus option instead of just using /dev/burner (or /dev/white-sony-drive, etc.) for the name. See the linux-kernel mailing list for some great flamewars, many involving Linus and many which lead to somebody catching Joerg in a lie.

So... are you Joerg, or are you his buddy the xcdroast author? That program too is a piece of shit. I've seen the code. It has buffer overflows. It doesn't abstract out the interface to the burner program. All over the code one can find ugly little bits of buggy cdrecord output parsing code, mixed right in with the GUI widgets. That's not how competant people write programs, excepting throw-away hacks.

Re:CDDL

[krmt]

I didn't say they made the Apache license compatible with the GPL. There was code being distributed under the Apache license and the GPL in much the same manner as Schilling is distributing cdrtools with mixed and incompatible terms. Some Debian people talked to some Apache people and got the license conflict resolved. The Apache people were obviously much more cooperative than Schilling.

Re:CDDL

[Chops]

Anyone who kept track of Joerg Schilling, and his prominent ego, was able to clearly see the inevitable fork from quite a distance away.

Seconded. I used to use Schilling's "prodvd" fork of cdrecord to burn DVDs at work. Since prodvd is shareware (free for personal use, but registration required for commercial use), I talked to my boss about registering my copy, and then tried to contact Schilling to pay him the money to get a legal license. I tried two email addresses listed in his webspace, got no response from either, and gave up.

A little while later, I tried unsuccessfully to get the then-new free patches to support DVD burning under cdrecord to work, and filed a bug against them. Schilling then suddenly piped up (from one of the email addresses I'd tried before), criticizing the patches without providing any useful information. I sent him email privately explaining that I was currently using cdrecord-prodvd in a business context, and hence needed to give him money, and asking where to send the check. He never responded.

Also, if you compare the current cdrecord page with the wayback archive, you'll see that quite recently he has added the following statement to the project page:

Warning: do not use Debian binaries as they include many Debian specific bugs and still do not run correctly on Linux-2.6

In short, the man seems to have a bit of programming skill, but he's also a big pain in the ass.

Re:CDDL

[rainer_d]

> He has the gall to claim that users actually like to specify all burners by a 1980s-style set of three numbers,

Hey - I actually thought it to be normal.
Because, in FreeBSD-land, there's camcontrol(8) devlist, which gives you exactly these numbers.
Also, some people may have more than one burner. The above makes it very obvious, which one is the right one.

> and that users actually like running the -scanbus option instead of just using /dev/burner

It's a legacy, maybe - but just try to find a command in Linux to rescan your SCSI-bus.
Well, there isn't. Instead, you are supposed to echo some values into certain parts of the procfs, or run some vendor-specific script.
Wow, l33t. Impressive. *That's* what I call a hack.

Yes, cdrecord is still living in SCSI-land - but this is the only cross-platform (API-) stable peripheral interface that works on almost any unix-platform.
Nowadays, too much open-source software is full of code that assume that everybody=linux - or those stupid install-scripts that assume sh=bash.
I *loathe* them.

And, as someone else pointed out: if it would be so easy-peasy to code a cdrecord replacement, somebody would have done it already.
But apparently, some people prefer to fight over licences, rather than actually produce code...
(This is not to put down the OpenBSD-project, who also fight for free-ness of code - but they actually go the extra-mile and have the guts to start from scratch, if it is necessary. In Linux-land, forking a GPLed older version seems to be de-rigeur - any counter-examples?)

Re:CDDL

[ozbird]

Agreed. The ability to access remote SCSI devices is very useful in a thin-client environment. (Only having xcdroast as a front-end isn't too great, though; last time I checked k3b didn't understand remote devices.)

What about dvdrtools?

[grandmofftarkin]

I thought that someone already forked this long ago because of problems with Joerg Schilling mucking around with the license? Read the wikipedia entry on dvdrtools. In fact, dvdrtools is already a debian package. Why did they need another fork?

But it belongs to Schilling, does it not?

[ishmalius]

If so, then he can use any license he wants. He could wrap it in the User Must Wear Chicken Suit License if he so desires.

The Debian side itself says in the message that Mr. Schilling's is the original upstream code, and that he has been very supportive of them in the past.

It almost sounds as if they wanted to dictate to him what the terms should be, and they are unhappy that he is not complying.

Why Jörg, why ?...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that Jörg Schilling contributed to OSS for many years and we should all thank him for that.
However, I was pretty disappointed the day I got to his site and saw that I had to pay for cdrecord if I wished to burn... a DVD ?! For crying out loud...

This kind of event is actually hindering for the OSS community in general. During years no one needed to create a set of cd-recording tools for Linux, because... there were already Jörg Schilling's ones ! Until one day, he decides to put a lid on further enhancement of his old "free" package and creates a semi-commercial product.
Now someone will have to start almost from "scratch zero" to create/evolve the new "free" cd/dvd burning tool for GNU-based operating systems.

Re:Why Jörg, why ?...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my Jörg story:

I was working on a port of SGI's PCP to Solaris. At the time the only two ports were Irix and Linux.
I needed a particular function (don't recall what it was offhand) that was available under Solaris from
the UCB stuff -- yuck! Google turned up some code written by Jörg. It worked out just fine
and didn't require the UCB layer.

I submitted my patch to SGI. They wanted copyright assignation from me (no problem) but also from the original
author. I emailed Jörg and he was very helpful and polite. He worked through the inane process that
SGI legal set out for us and signed over copyright on the code to SGI all on the say-so of some stranger he'd
never met.

He's a class-A nice guy in my book...

Re:Good for Jorg...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read what happened? He doesn't know anything about the license he is using now. Then he threw a hissy-fit when told about how his license doesn't do what he thinks it does.

He actually comes out of this looking like a little kid with his fingers in his ears screaming, "I can't hear you, lalalalala!"

Re:Go Debian!

[gmuslera]

Just love to read this. No matter how much he contributed with debian, open source movement, the much needed cdrtools, etc. He watches with simpaty for a moment an open license that is not GPL compatible (for his own reasons, maybe he still have the right of have his own toughts) and became a traitor, someone that must be kicked, expelled and blamed all over internet.

If his new license is not compatible with Debian goals, ideals, etc, and they cant agree in a common point, ok, substitute his package for another with a more Debian-like license in that particular distribution, but is not like he became the evil lord of darkness and must be despised by everyone. We all have too much to thank to him for all what he did already.

Joerg's position

[Britz]

Why didn't the author include Joerg's position on this? He didn't even provide a link to his hompage:
http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/cdrecord.ht ml

He also seems to have problems with Suse and RedHat as far as his homepage goes (they also include older versions) and with the Linux kernel itself. There seems to be some stuff he dislikes about the SCSI subsystem. And he seems to prefer the way Solaris handles SCSI. Maybe someone with some insight (if there are any left on /.) could comment on that one, since I am not a kernel hacker.

Joerg Schilling is doing excellent work. But as some others have commented there seem to be personal issues. So it is a shame that they had to use such a lame excuse to boot him. I am pretty sure the fork will go nowhere or at best use patches from Joerg Schilling proving that there never were incompatible licences.

Note that I don't argue that he might be a difficult character. Comments on /. as well as his problems with other distros and the kernel suggest that he is. I simply don't know. But I also heard that Linux Torvalds can be a very harsh himself. Anybody want to fork the kernel because of that?

Re:More freedom ?

[larry bagina]

The GPL provides restrictions that other free software licenses don't.

If I write code under a BSD license, anyone can use make use it. GPL, BSD, CDDL, even proprietary closed source code. Everyone has freedom.

GPL code is only free for use with other GPL code.

GPL gives you freedom the same way segregation gives you freedom -- freedom for some, not all.

Re:CDDL is free

[lhand]

Sure the VM will be free software, it just won't be GPL compatable. So you'll never be able to use GPL code in the VM and you'll never be able to use VM code in anything licensed with the GPL.

There are free licenses that are not compatible with the GPL.

Gentoo is starting to really piss me off.

[Ant P.]

While Debian has the balls to do this, Gentoo already had a GPLed fork of cdrtools available, and TOOK IT AWAY just because a new version of cdrtools came out with a few new features.

Re:Gentoo is starting to really piss me off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo already had a GPLed fork of cdrtools available, and TOOK IT AWAY just because a new version of cdrtools came out with a few new features.

I've also noticed a certain tendency in Gentoo to play fast and loose with the licenses. My all-time favorites are packages that are flagged with the "as-is" metalicense. If you look in the file describing it you will notices it clearly saying that this is intended to flag packages that come under a MIT or BSD or similar liberal license.
However a lot of packagers seem to disregard that and flag packages that, for example, have "non-commercial" restrictions on them. I reported some of those packages and it was changed but it's a pain to work against the tide here and it's also a pain to look up every "as-is" flagged package up on the web for the actual license because the meaning of this metalicenses has been diluted to "can be anything that can somehow be distributed, maybe even binary-only".

Re:Xorg got MIT license- BAN Xorg TOO??????

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pain sometimes, but there's distros out there who don't worry so much about licensing issues you can use if you're concerned.

Sober and useful advice to anyone conflicted about Debian license policy. Now, go forth, you whinnies, don't let the door hit your ass, but it will, cuz i'm kicking it from the other side.

Joerg is violating the GPL too

[r00t]

He'd be in the clear if cdrecord were 100% his own work. If that were the case, then one might reasonably argue that he has implicitly granted an exception to the GPL and/or CDDL.

Problem for Joerg: he has included GPL work from other people. This puts Joerg in violation of the GPL.