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GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?
Scott_F writes "I recently reviewed several commercial, closed-source slideshow authoring packages for Windows and came across an alarming trend. Several of the packages I installed included GPL and LGPL software without any mention of the GPL, much less source code. For example, DVD Photo Slideshow (www.dvd-photo-slideshow.com) included mkisofs, cdrdao, dvdauthor, spumux, id3lib, lame, mpeg2enc, and mplex (all of which are GPL or LGPL). The company tried to hide this by wrapping them all in DLLs. There are other violations in other packages as well. Based on my testing of other software, it seems that use of GPL software in commercial Windows applications is on the rise. My question is how much are GPL violations in the Windows world being pursued? Does the FSF or EFF follow up on these if the platform is not GPL? How aware is the community of this trend?" This new method of detecting GPL violations could help here.
There is a good chance that some of this software is written by a 13 year old in his moms basement, who has little understanding of the GPL for him is just seems like Free Software, and is probably confusing it with the BSD style license, if they indeed care. I would understand Screaming "YOU ARE BREAKING THE GPL!!" for larger packages where people are making a lot of money and/or the program widly distributed and used by a lot of people. But for silly application that are probably used by less then a thousand people in the world and if it is no longer supported next week no one would care then I wouldn't bother.
Am I am the only one who finds it funny for a group of people who Demmand to confront the Evils of DRM, Protect the rights of Pirates, Abolish the legal system for computers and let us just do our work freely, when peope violate a licence made by this group they basicly do the same as the evil companies do...
Create Software to find violators.
Want to send lawers to make the violators Pay (doesn't matter if is a 13 year old kid who writes software like kids use to have paper routes 30 years ago.)
Try to spread propraganda to make the overall comunity feel sorry for the poor GPL creaters whos work is violated and somehow hurts of the children (Wont someone please think of the children!!!)
Face it Open Source Closed Source kinda in the middle source.... It doesn't matter people are still jerks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The sad thing is that now he's all *happy* because he has preserved the racial purity of FOSS. Top marks, indeed.
Global warming is a cube.